Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 40 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Use gratitude to snap out of a funk
— From The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy
I recently had a particularly challenging morning and was stuck in a funk. Ugh. I went through a course years ago where the instructor called this “looping,” because you keep playing the same scene in your mind over and over in an endless loop (and yes, it drives you crazy and you can’t move forward, I certainly don’t recommend it…).
I did not have the time, or the willingness to let the funk take my day over in endless loops. I had a full day ahead of me, and I wanted to be at my best for it. I needed to find a way to snap out of the funk and, preferably, do it as fast as possible.
Fortunately, I had been reading earlier that morning The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (you will definitely see some of its great ideas in here soon), and one of the things that struck me was a Gratitude Assessment (you can download a printable worksheet for free from here along with many other great, free resources that Hardy offers).
While the gratitude assessment is offered “to bolster your abundant mindset,” I thought I’d use it to help me change my mind and put things into perspective, which is what I needed at the moment. It worked like magic.
It’s wonderful what a little gratitude can do: I started out in a horrendous mood, and when I finished the exercise a moment later, I was in an infinitely better place, and feeling peaceful and grateful. The bad mood had disappeared. I was able to put my negative feelings in a “mental container” and keep them there (as opposed to letting them run wild in loops) for me to later do some reflective thinking and figure out the lessons I needed to learn from that experience. My gratitude to this exercise in gratitude!
Below is the assessment. As you will see, it’s very simple, but I encourage you to do it often (not just when you want to snap out of a funk). Once you do it, you’ll see how powerful and restorative it can be.
By the way, YOU are in my gratitude list. A wholehearted, BIG THANK YOU for being a part of the EntreGurus family and for being here today! 🙂
GRATITUDE ASSESSMENT
- 3 amazing people in my life are: ________________________
- 3 great things about my physical body are:________________________
- 3 great things about my home and where I live are: ________________________
- 3 great things about where I work and what I do for a living are: ________________________
- 3 great gifts of unique talent and skill I have been given are:________________________
- 3 great gifts of knowledge and experience that I have been given are: ________________________
- 3 ways in which I have experienced “luck” in my life are: ________________________
- 3 ways in which my life is wealthy, abundant and prosperous are: ________________________
And to make your day even better, I’ll leave you with this beautiful quote for you to ponder throughout the day:
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
– Melody Beattie
ACTION
TODAY: Take a few minutes to do the gratitude assessment and see how much more wonderful your day gets!
FUTURE: Make it a habit to incorporate gratitude in your life daily, not just during Thanksgiving.* At the beginning of every day think of 3 persons/things that you are grateful for; and at end of every day do the same. And, of course, whenever you have a bad day and you need to snap out of a funk, come to this gratitude assessment and watch your bad day transform into a much better one.
Know someone who needs to adopt an attitude of gratitude? Please share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
* For international Gurupies**: Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday in the United States (the 4th Thursday in November) in which families get together to share a special meal, give thanks and appreciate all that they have, especially one another.
**Gurupie = blend of guru and groupie = how I fondly refer to the EntreGurus’ community, because we all follow the ideas of the gurus.