Last post we talked about my introduction to the power of gratitude. In a way it was also my introduction to the world of self-improvement. That has went on to shape the path of my life for the last 25+ years. If you did not read our last conversation, might I suggest you give it a look. In a nutshell, I began using gratitude to prove that it made no difference in your life. By the end of 30 days, I was encouraging all of my friends and family to use it too. Quite the turnaround for someone who began with a very cynical attitude. After I was so excited and convinced that gratitude can change your life, the universe seemed to say, “Let us see how committed you are to this.” The world often works this way. It will test you to see how serious you are about your journey. In this case, after having this crash course in gratitude, I literally crashed. A young man stopped in the middle of an intersection and I ended up going through my windshield.
Most people would think this would be a situation that would deter someone from feeling grateful. Certainly it is not an experience that I would recommend. Let me tell you what I did learn about myself. I am not a very good friend to me most of the time. What on earth does that mean? It means that my inner conversation had been one of discouragement and negative sarcasm. That is the majority of what we run into in the world today. We seldom pay attention to our inner dialogue. It seems to be a running conversation that occurs in our head unfettered. Let me assure you when you wake up in a hospital bed after headbutting the windshield of a 2000 Jeep, you have plenty of time to pay attention to what you are saying to yourself. Mine wasn’t so good…to begin with. I recall waking up and thinking, “This sucks.” There may have been a few more colorful words thrown in, but you get the idea. My car was totaled. I was going to miss my first day of work in 9 years. None of it was good, or so I thought.
Just as I was swimming in a sea of self-pity, something, or should I say someone, changed all that. A nurse came in and said those five magic words. “Would you like some coffee?” Sadly, it wasn’t as much as these nurses above had. In fact, it was rather awful coffee in a little Styrofoam cup. It was, however, coffee. I recall saying to myself, “At least I have a cup of coffee.” Then all of that gratitude I had been practicing came back. I thought if it can work when life is sunshine and rainbows, let us see if it will work now. I started contemplating what I could be grateful for. I did have insurance, even if the young man who caused the accident did not. I was alive to be having this conversation with myself. There was family on the way to help me. Suddenly the outlook did not seem as gloomy. There was potential, if nothing else.
That is when I learned a very valuable lesson. The conversation we have with ourself has a great impact on our emotional condition. As a matter of fact, I would say it determines our emotional condition. Also discovered in that moment was the fact that the conversation we have with ourselves can be controlled. We are not at the whim of that inner voice, or voices depending on the individual. No, we have a say in how we talk to ourself. We can be our best friend cheering ourselves on, or we can be our worst enemy putting ourselves down. Either way, the impact is just as great on the rest of our life.
One other thing that happened in that moment, that I may not have wrapped my head around until much later was the realization that two opposing views can be true. In fact, two opposing worlds can be true. We have all heard the quandary over whether the glass is half full or half empty. Both can be true at the same time. When you are grateful, you are seeing the glass as half full. Neither view changes the actual state of the liquid in the glass, it only changes how you feel observing it. What is the big deal about that? How you feel is your life. If you are a person who finds every reason to complain and you win a million dollars, you will just be a millionaire who likes to complain. That is why taking control of the inner conversation is so important. It determines the quality of your life. The best way to make sure that conversation is a good one is by developing an attitude of gratitude.
SECRET 2 AN AMAZING LIFE 