My Life-Changing Aha! Gratitude Moment

This weekend, families across America will celebrate Thanksgiving. A day when we all think about the things in our lives we are grateful for. This is one of my favorite Holidays. There are no gifts, no desire for materialistic things, no receiving anything other than love and gratitude. Friends, family, and a nice meal, simple as that. I was scrolling through my LinkedIn feed and saw a quote that my former boss had posted, “Gratitude turns what you have into enough”. This quote stuck with me for a while, and I tried to pinpoint why I couldn’t get it off my mind all day. I started to think about a course I recently completed through Yale University (via Coursera) called “The Science of Well-Being”. As you may know by now, I am very much into personal growth and development and I enjoy learning ways to always improve myself and my attitude towards life. With this class, I learned new, interesting things, while also being reminded of those I already know. At the end, each student is challenged with the task of implementing one thing you learned into your everyday life for 4 weeks and then reporting on how your mood has improved over this time. I chose meditation and gratitude, two things that I feel go hand in hand nicely. Although I have used meditation and gratitude in my life for many years, I felt that I had really been neglecting both of them lately, and I could feel the impact in my low mood. I wanted to change my outlook back into a positive space, so I began. I downloaded the Calm app on my phone which offers lovely daily guided meditations, followed by an opportunity to journal and reflect on the meditation, and finally a gratitude journal to write down three things I am most grateful for. I started noticing that while it was very difficult at first to keep focused, slowly over time it became much easier. I began feeling calmer, more in tune with myself, less emotional, and more hopeful. That familiar sense of gratitude for the small, simple things in my day began to return; the way my tea tastes so good with milk and sugar, the warm bed that I sleep in every night, the big kitchen table I have to work at every day (any New Yorker will appreciate how this is something to be grateful for). Over time my mood improved dramatically.

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning feeling especially grateful. I began sending text messages to friends, new and old. After a few, I started to notice something wonderful, I was sending “Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for our 14 year friendship”, for our 20 year friendship, our 36 year friendship, our lifelong friendship. I started to realize how many dear friends I have kept throughout my life. Friends that are truly so close to my heart, and that I couldn’t imagine going through life without. Sometimes I get sad that time is passing so quickly. For the most part, I do love getting older. I love the sense of peace that comes with aging and also the sense of not giving a f***. It is freeing and creates the contentment that is not fully possible in our younger years. Although I can appreciate this, there are definitely plenty of days that I feel blue over the years sweeping by so quickly. What I realized on Thanksgiving Day as I was sending text messages to my friends is this; you don’t get to have amazing 36-year long friendships when you are young. You don’t get to have memories with people from the time they were born, standing up for them at their weddings, watching them become mothers and fathers, calling them, and knowing you don’t even have to say a word because they know exactly how you are feeling, they know you that well. You don’t get this amazing experience when you are young. Only as the years go by, are you blessed with this opportunity. It was an "aha” moment for me (I have a lot of these in life). A realization that this is the best thing about growing up, and growing older. Out of all of the things I have in my life to be grateful for; my cello, a warm house, living in an amazing city, I think the thing I was feeling overwhelmingly grateful for on Thanksgiving Day was realizing all of the amazing friendships I have, including those in my big loving family.

The quote that I saw on LinkedIn stuck with me so much because as a society; especially in America, we seem to never have enough. We are never smart enough, never have a nice enough car, or a good enough job, or a big enough house. We always want more and we think money and material things will finally make us happy, but there is one thing consistent in all of the learning I have done on happiness and well-being over the years; nothing you can achieve or obtain will make you any happier, and if you continue to seek them out, you will always be left wanting more. Nothing will ever be enough. The gratitude is in the Now. It is when we realize that what we already have is enough. Once we can make this shift in our mind; and it’s not easy, we are left with contentment that no money can buy. I don’t have a lot of materialistic things that one might think would bring happiness. I don’t have a car, I don’t own a house, I don’t have nice handbags or fancy jewelry. I don’t even have a job at this point, but I know that what I have in my life, especially the people in my life is 100% all I need to be happy. Sure, we need jobs and money to survive, and that will come, but for now, I will live content with the knowledge that all the things I do have, especially my relationships are simply enough.

Photo Credit: Janko Ferlic @itfeelslikefilm