Dialing in to the gratitude station
December 29, 2024
We made it to the last few days of the year, where time warps and wanes. I love being suspended in this liminal space of introspection, optimism, planning, and leftover pastries and peppermints.
This has been a year of profound transitions for me personally. As a result I’ve been doing more looking inwards, forwards, and backwards than at any other time of my life. Like pressing on old bruises to test whether they still hurt, it has often been achey and uncomfortable and sometimes deeply painful. A peace-seeking even-keeled rosy-eyed optimist by nature, finding myself sinking into an emotional spiral more than once has been new and unsettling.
Luckily I have discovered and rediscovered (and rediscovered) a practice that surprisingly but reliably lifts me out of those spirals. While it is hard to talk about without sounding trite, it’s been so valuable and profound to experience its potency that it has become my sole New Year’s intention, mainly to hammer it into my head so perhaps I won’t keep repeating the same cycle.
The practice is gratitude. I know you’ve heard it before, and I’ve said it before, and yet it bears repeating.
Gratitude is an energetic state, a frequency, like a radio station you can set your dial to at any time. It is uplifting and expansive and fulfilling and you don’t need to do any thinking or bargaining or promising to get there, you just need to remember to tune into it. And once you are tuned in to that station, it is not possible to feel anxious, regretful, judgmental, vengeful, distrustful, fearful, or any of those other low, heavy states — they shift and transform and lose their potency, and the sources of pain or discomfort become easier to see and understand. Everything becomes easier to see and understand with compassion and clarity.
While cultivating gratitude alone won’t solve all of your problems, it puts them in perspective and generates a sense of resourcefulness and capability. Numerous times in recent weeks I’ve caught myself plodding around like a crankety crankenheimer, sour-faced and pouty, looking at the world through a grumbly haze — sometimes for good reason! — and I’ve been able to make a quick turnaround. Nothing in my circumstances changes and yet I can instantly have a completely different perspective — present, compassionate, appreciative. The more I practice the shift the easier it becomes to recreate. Plus it’s contagious for everyone around me. The key is to notice when the dial has slipped out of tune and then make adjustments until it clicks back into place.
There are many different methods for cultivating gratitude that have proven effective for different people, and I strongly recommend experimenting until you find one that works for you. Here I share the practice that has always served me and a few others. Also below, some FAQ about my upcoming Chakra Toolkit series, a great opportunity for transformative, uplifting inner work in a supportive group. Registration is open until January 3rd.
May the new year bring you depth and beauty, clarity and light, ease and expansion, and even more to be grateful for. Thank you for being a part of my year.
