+1 for Gratitude

Your gratitude post really resonated with me. Looking back through my posts here, I think most of them are basically this–looking for things that are working, even if they're small. I remember reading recently (I can't remember where now) that gratitude is a habit or a muscle, and that it's worth training ourselves to look for things that make us happy. Similarly pessimism, or fear, or anger are habits that we reinforce and train and build up when we're doom-scrolling or scanning headlines for impending disaster.

Sometimes I wonder how much of this weird, unsettled, uneasy feeling is really warranted and how much is due to these strange circumstances that we're in coloring our vision. Things are crazy sure, but I suspect they feel way worse because everything feels way worse when you're sequestered in your house for two years, with every small decision feeling momentous and, for many of us, our data is coming from terrified angry people on social media.

On more than one occasion my wife or I will be spiraling on some gloomy topic and the other will interject with something along the lines of "you're doing the thing again, you're in the bad place, you're not thinking clearly." And it will be true. It could be a decision that our kids are making about sports or a minor issue with a car, or a perceived slight, and it feels like a major all-encompassing disaster.

I've noticed the same thing with other people I interact with, a creeping cynicism of the kind I just described myself being stuck in–an irrational focus on the worst case scenario, or a certainty of failure. There are cases where an unmitigated win is dismissed, or a win from a mere month ago is completely forgotten. When it's pointed out the response is usually "oh yeah, I forgot about that."

Many of us are in this space together it seems, and our work is to pull each other out when we can. We can help ourselves as well by working to keep an eye on the good because, as you say, it really is there.