Few weeks back I was talking about the power of gratitude with one of my newest clients. As we were discussing about practicing gratitude, he told me how grateful he all the time is.
In fact, he’s so grateful that he feels he has no right to be more grateful, nor to ask for more gratitude. He sometimes even wonders if he really deserves this much good in his life. Is there any left for others?
Well, what do you think? Is there?
From outsider’s perspective it’s easy to say that of course there is! But when you’re the one wondering it might be hard to see the forest for the trees.
Nonetheless, gratitude and gratefulness only multiply as used. There is no lack, only abundance. The only thing that may deplete these resources is if we don’t practice them.
As we dived deeper in the topic of gratitude and being grateful, we soon discovered how in many cases my client had not actually been practicing gratitude. He had, more or less, been practicing the skill of limiting his tolerance of wellbeing, disguised in gratefulness.
For example, by telling me how grateful he is for his wonderful family and then immediately adding how things could be much worse. Or how his business has gotten such a good start, but not forgetting to mention how it is going to be a rocky road to get where he’d like to be with it. Or how enthusiastic he is about his current goals in life, explaining how it hasn’t always been so.
It’s like looking at a bird get on its wings and then suddenly cutting them off. I know, that never happens! The birds just don’t do that! It would be completely unnatural. And it is just as unnatural for us human beings to enjoy life and then suddenly, and shortly, cut the fun out for no obvious reason. And still we do it.
Why, when getting high on life, do we have to immediately draw our attention back to things that do not yet, or did not in the past, work?
If I wouldn’t know better, I’d say we have this glass ceiling on how much goodness we’re able to stand and how good we’re willing to let life get. But of course there isn’t any such ceilings. Is there?
Much love,
Paula
xx