Welcome back to Consider Yourself Hugged! Click here to listen to Episode 113. OR click YouTube below to watch! (***Disclaimer: I provide these notes as a skeleton for the show - nothing fancy 😄)
Welcome to the last day of November which unbeknownst to me is apparently National Gratitude month (Read the article here)! If you saw my post on Facebook a couple of days ago, I posted a picture of my kitty Leesi laying on my shoulder. I post about her a lot because she just gives me so much to talk about! (See cute galleries below.)
Today, first I’ll share the silly story, then two reasons why it’s hard to be grateful, and finally three tips on how to be more grateful.
Why is it so hard?
1. First, The Happiness Formula (Read the article here):
Three factors affect your happiness, which I also take further to say your ability to feel grateful. The are your genetics, the second the conditions of your life, and the choices you make.
2. The second area that makes feeling grateful difficult is something called Negativity Bias (Read the article here). Our brains actually have evolved to pay more attention to the negative than the positive.
How do you then incorporate more gratitude into your life?
I decided three things for myself
1. Focus on one thing at a time. It can be way too overwhelming and possibly impossible to just say to yourself, I will be more grateful. It’s too much for your brain to handle, so pick one situation. For now, I am picking Leesi because it’s a funny story and not because it is the most challenging thing in my life right now 😁
2. Be clear with myself that it doesn’t mean I ignore the bad parts of life. I’m not going to let Leesi jump on the counters or allow her to bite me.
3. Practice looking for gratitude when things are good. With Leesi, I could laugh at her antics and be grateful for her time on my shoulder and put her down before it goes too far.
4. Create a process in my head. For example, I can create columns in my head and do the math. Let's say she is up with us 16 hours a day (let’s just use that figure even though it’s not super accurate because obviously we leave some etc.) 16 hours -8 hours of sleep. Most of the day she sleeps part of the day, she laid on my lap, she eats - so honestly, there is more to be grateful for then is negative Also, I have to say some other things to be grateful for are that my husband doesn’t kill her and finds her funny and that she and Charlie are pretty adorable together (see the gallery below!)
The Leesi Image Gallery 😺
The Leesi Video Gallery 😺
Thanks for joining today! As ’ve always asked in the past, please pass the show link along to your friends and subscribe, download, and review wherever you are listening. If you’re a woman and you haven’t joined our private FB group A Place for Women, please do that now! It’ll be your source of encouragement.
And until next time, Consider Yourself Hugged 😘🤗