Be Grateful Instead of Hateful

"I had been practicing misery every night by focusing on everything I hated... all it did was make everything worse. What if, instead of griping, I practiced gratitude? Not the 'count you blessings' thing. What if I practiced gratitude for everything just as it is-- for what I hated and disliked?"

Melody Beattie, Make Miracles in Forty Days

There's no greater acceptance of reality than practicing gratitude for the people and things we don't like, or even hate. After all, we give our personal power away to people, behaviors and things we can't control. And we give that power away by investing a great deal of time and negative energy in ruminating over what we are powerless to change.

We have the power to change only one person and that person is us. Nothing changes for the better until we decide to change for the better. So how about we look at people who have hurt us, people we have come to hate, and see them as teachers instead of seeing them as creeps? Look back at the lessons that you learned from those persons, as opposed to simply looking back angrily at how they hurt you. Be grateful that life used those persons to teach you important lessons that you needed to learn. Take the wisdom from those lessons and be grateful that you are now a stronger and wiser person.

When we choose to see "enemies" as "teachers," we take our personal power back from those people. It's easier to forgive them if we can see them as someone who actually may have done us more good than bad. This doesn't mean that we don't grieve our loses. And it doesn't mean that anything they did wrong is now somehow right. No. Wrong is wrong. But if we have learned an important lesson and are now better able to protect ourselves through new boundaries, then we can move beyond our hurt. We can choose to be grateful that we learned very important and necessary lessons just when we needed to do so.

And if there are behaviors we refuse to accept-- and thus constantly gripe about-- we need to learn to accept them and be grateful as well. For example, I live with someone who can't shut a drawer or turn off a light. I wasted lots of time griping to myself about this; in addition to angrily slamming drawers shut and turning off light switches. But no more. I decided to accept things as they are. I no longer gripe to myself and I no longer take responsibility for someone else's behavior. If drawers are open they can stay open forever. I let go of my need to be right and I am SOOOOOOO grateful because I am much happier.

Today is a great day to stop all of the negative brain-drain energy that we manifest. We need to stop focusing on all of those people and things we are powerless to change. And we can stop that negative brain-drain by CHOOSING to be grateful. Give it a try!