Being grateful for the positive things in your life is almost a no-brainer. Of course, you should be grateful. And, it’s often easy to do, even though in the hustle and bustle of daily life, we may sometimes forget.

Being grateful for the not-so-positive things in your life, on the other hand, is neither an obvious or easy thing to do.  But, I believe that it is vitally important to recognize and be grateful for the negatives too. Otherwise, you are living an unbalanced life.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that being grateful for the negative things isn’t easy. It’s very hard to be grateful for losing a job

when there’s no money in savings. It’s very hard to be grateful for a failed relationship. But we should be grateful, because it is through the negatives that we grow.

Be Grateful for What You Have

One of our natural tendencies is to focus on the negative. When we experience a challenging situation, a tough financial situation for example, we can still shift our thinking from focusing on what we don’t have (money) to what we do have. Being grateful for what we have allows us to put the challenges in perspective.

Research has shown that older people who are grateful for what they have during tough economic times are much less likely to become depressed than their peers, or even the middle-aged folks who aren’t grateful.

During challenging times we tend to focus on the negative. Being grateful for what we have reframes our focus to what we do have. I may not have the money for luxuries that I’ve grown accustomed to, but I do have enough to pay the bills and I have a roof over my head and food in my belly. Those are all things that not everyone an be grateful for, as they may not have those things.

We Grow Through Adversity

Ask anyone who does strength training and they will tell you that in order to strengthen a muscle, you have to stress it. Challenge it. Push it up to, and perhaps past, it’s limit.

The negatives in our lives challenge us. Rather than becoming complacent in our lives, we have to actively find ways to deal with the challenges we face. And, sometimes those challenges become new opportunities.

The family who finds they need to cut their food budget, may decide to grow some of their own food in a family garden. Ultimately, they may discover that not only does the food taste better when they grow it, but that the family time spent developing, tending and harvesting is a positive experience in itself. Moreover, they may discover a pleasure in gardening that they didn’t know existed.

If you get laid off, you might take the time as an opportunity to pursue an interest that you heretofore hadn’t had time to pursue. You might even find a way to turn that interest into a profit making activity.

Changing Your Perspective

If you find yourself facing a challenge, stop and think about the things you have. Your family, your health, your community. Think about the opportunities that are available to you. No matter how bad things may seem, when you take the time to review what you have and can find within yourself a gratefulness for these things, you will find that the challenge may not be so great as it first seemed.

Facing challenging situations without a grateful heart puts blinders on your eyes. You can’t see the opportunities that might exist because of the dark clouds that obscure your view. Changing your perspective can lift those clouds, remove the blinders.

And that change in perspective may open your eyes to new opportunities that your ungrateful self couldn’t see. And from that, you may find a better life.

A Challenge

I challange you to sit down each evening for the next five days and list out three to five things for which you are grateful. Think about the day and find what you are grateful on that day, not just general stuff, but specific things that were brought into your life that day. At the end of those five days, evaluate yourself. Are you happier, more settled, less stressed? I’m betting you are!

Share Your Story

Had an experience where changing your perspective changed your life? Share it!