The elusive and powerful Gratitude.

How often do you engage it?

I can hear you now. Oh goodie another post on gratitude.

Once you finish your eye roll, allow me to drop some Kung Fu wisdom on you. The Master (Keith Carradine) would say patience grasshopper. For within your reaction lies the lesson.

Gratitude is elusive. Not the idea but the practice. Sure, we can all share platitudes about gratitude anytime we see fit. How many entitled actors have you seen accepting their award as they spout off about how grateful and humbled they are, and in the next breath they angrily tear down some cause or agenda they don’t agree with?

To truly live it—to make it a part of your daily life—requires practice like any developed skill.

When does it matter most? It’s always important but gratitude is most important when life is going sideways. When the complaints arise or the outrage flares or the discomfort presented to us by those closest to us—cuz this is always where they flare the most often—how do you access gratitude at that point?

I don’t know about you but I can’t access feelings on command. It doesn’t really work that way. Most of my primary feelings arise as a result or a reaction. It’s healthy to feel those feelings—let them wash over and through you. I’m not talking about long-stuck feelings like rage or sexual frustration or free-floating anxiety about the world. I’m talking about the healthy response of feelings that elevate cortisol or flush dopamine. They arise quickly—like they’re supposed to—and subside quickly too if your body’s recovery is healthy.

Gratitude isn’t a feeling. It’s a state of mind. It’s a destination that requires practice.

Like any mastery, you get to it with repetition. You create an intentional path something akin to an ascending hike through difficult mountain terrain. You’re digging and leaning forward—stepping over roots and rocks—feeling the burn in the quads and the lungs—knowing that the practice of what you’re doing has a tangible reward beyond the discomfort of the moment.

I remember in the early days of my sobriety path some old-timers would self-identify as “grateful alcoholics.” I’d think yeah whatever moron. I was also instructed several times to write out a gratitude list. This, in the middle of sweating my way through my first attempt at the 12 steps. You want me to do what? My list at the time was a list of one item—I was grateful to be alive. That was about it.

Now one of my gratitudes is that I kept digging at it. I kept going up the trail. I didn’t quit when it got tough and I felt like shit. One more step. One more day sober. One more little gratitude on the daily list. Now, after 16 years, it’s like a favorite song that comes on the satellite radio—I know every lyric. I don’t really have to write them down anymore. They’re right there within reach from every room kinda like my 2.0 reading glasses.

The Gratitude List

How you develop your list is unimportant. Everyone has their own method. What I’ve discovered is that when I build a list these days—whether I do it in writing—or simply build it in my head—there are fundamental building blocks each time I do it. Like a workout that requires a warmup before you starting packing on the weight or the pace. These make up the building blocks of the gratitude pyramid.

I’m grateful for (never ranked):

My sobriety

My higher power

My health

My loving partner Ann

My family

My friends

My pooches

Then you go from there and this is the part that takes work. Everyone can spout a gratitude list like the one above in a few moments. To use those as a jumping off point to finish out your pyramid takes more practice and work.

Here’s a few examples from my own life.

I was able to spend a lot time with my both of my parents this summer due to Ann and I spending ninety days in the mountains of Arizona. We’re up in the pine trees at altitude with much cooler weather than our home in Central Texas. One of the reasons we’ve chosen this place is because I’ve spent occasional time there over the last thirty years. My parents invested in a golf community development back in the mid-nineties that has blossomed into a destination club that is only a ninety-minute drive from the Phoenix/Scottsdale metropolitan area. We’ve spent the last two summers there in a rental property that allows us to bring our entire dog pack.

Given the proximity we were able to visit Mom and Dad—who celebrated their ninetieth birthdays this year—about once a week.

Mom suffers from anxiety to a degree that isn’t debilitating to her necessarily but takes a toll on those around her. I don’t have a lot of memories of Mom being such a worrier in our younger years, but at her age now she worries about everything. Most of it is outside of her control, or may not ever happen, but that doesn’t keep her from fixating on it for long periods of time.

Dad suffers from Parkinsons. The symptoms are mostly under control due to medication but are often pronounced due to a stroke eighteen months ago. He uses a walker to get around. They live together in a wonderful senior living community and have their own small, two-bedroom villa. There are levels of care as they progress in their aging journey. They have a lot of friends their own age, regular social activities and meals and workouts. They also have a daily caregiver. So they certainly don’t need me or my two brothers to perform the daily ministrations of people their age. We focus instead on quality time together.

There are times during our visits when annoyances arise, and I find myself judging their decisions or the way they’re spending their precious remaining time. At those moments when I catch myself in this state, I can easily shift into the Serenity Prayer and settle myself in gratitude.

I am so incredibly fortunate that I have both of my parents alive at 90.

I am so incredibly fortunate that we can have time together, eat meals, and have fruitful conversations about the wonderful memories we share in a long family life.

I am so grateful that I’m in a place in my own life where I have a loving and supportive life partner and can afford to take time out of my life to spend quality time with my parents in their home environment.

Another example.

As a sixty-seven-year-old former athlete, I have many days when I am humbled by my body’s inability to do the things I once could. That said, I work out regularly. I do daily cardio—walking, elliptical, stationary bike, or rowing machine—or all of the above. I lift weights 2-3 times a week to keep up my musculature and strength. But I get sore easier, and I recover slowly. I can run but I can’t run fast anymore. I don’t have the endurance I once did. There are plenty of times when I find myself slipping into a poor me mentality. Aging is not for the timid.

At those moments I reach into that recovery toolbox and pull out a few self-affirming thoughts.

I have lost many friends and family. They passed before their time, but what determines our time? I am so fortunate to be able to get up in the morning, walk to my home gym on my own property, and put in a little bit of time focusing on my physical longevity.

I have many friends my own age—even younger—who are suffering from debilitating diseases of the body. How grateful am I that at this point in my life I remain disease-free? Extremely.

I have seen so people try and fail at this sobriety and recovery journey. It can be one of the hardest things you’ll ever go through in a life. The odds are against us. Those of us who were once enslaved by a love/need of substance mostly don’t make it through. For whatever reason I’ve been able to make it through to the other side and live a life clean and clear and free. For that my gratitude is overflowing.

Another example from my relatively new marriage—now in its twenty-second month—I still consider myself a newlywed at sixty-seven.

She’s driving me nuts right now. That little thing she’s doing—or not doing—is not at all the way I would do it. It doesn’t even matter what the thing is. Every relationship has them. We choose equally wounded people to be with, and we can expose those wounds in each other with startling ease. At those moments if I can resist reacting and snapping off a hurtful comment or action, I reach deep inside myself and grab onto the gratitude train.

It works every time—sometimes quickly—sometimes more slowly.

God, you brought me a woman with whom to share my life. A woman who loves me for exactly who I am. All my shit. God, thank you so much for this incredible life-saving gift.

This woman is incredible—smart, beautiful, soulful, adventurous, and emotionally evolved. Whatever it is in me that reacts to that thing in her, please take it away. I’m so grateful that we can share a home, a life, a bed together and keep growing in our love for one another. Please allow me to look at my own part in those moments.

I’m so incredibly grateful for a partner who shares my passion for recovery. Someone I can learn with and from. Any of the 12-step programs only require two participants to call it a meeting. Our entire marriage is a meeting. What a blessing has been bestowed upon us.

Here’s a pretty regular one that I use. The need for it can arise from a quick review of the daily avalanche of shitty news, a conversation with someone I engage with, or just driving down the road amidst the clown show of vehicular behavior.

I am so very grateful that I don’t engage in hate. I’m grateful that I have the wisdom to truly understand that most of the stupid and hateful human behavior that I witness has not and does not affect my day-to-day life unless I let it. I’m grateful that I have the hard-earned tools to bring myself back to the center and focus on the things in my life that bring me peace—that demonstrate kindness and love—and allow me to be a positive force in the universe rather than the opposite.

I’m grateful I live in the United States, that I’m relatively free to do as I please, and that I was born and have lived in the time that I have.

I fully subscribe to the theory that discomfort is a constant in our lives. What I try to separate is the discomfort I cause myself—that I can do something about—and the discomfort created by others—that I can either ignore or process accordingly. There is a huge difference between the stress that is activated by exercise or tough conversations or challenges in our life. All of these situations trigger a natural response in the body to rise to the occasion and then we can recover in a healthy manner. The debilitating and unhealthy stress—I like to call it free-floating anxiety—is what much of the world is suffering from. Those that live with the constant wish for things to be different than they are. That stressful state—the inability to accept the world as it is—is untenable, and it is reflected in the outrage and ignorance and bad behavior that can be witnessed all around us.

There is nothing wrong with imagining a better world for yourself, your family, your community, or the world at large. Making change requires intention and action. The best you can hope for is to make changes in your own life—changing the things within your control—rather than focusing constantly on what others should be doing. The most dishonest and hypocritical among us are the one that constantly draw attention to the bad thinking and behavior of others while they own lives are a shit show.

All of us—even those with the least amount of resources or resiliency—have something to be grateful for. Finding and recognizing it is what makes up a gratitude practice. I don’t know how to fix what’s painful in other’s lives, although I’ve certainly tried over the years. I’m no savior. I’m just a guy who has learned hard lessons about myself and hope that through sharing some of those lessons I help you in some small way.

I’m grateful that I’ve witnessed miracles in my life. I’m grateful that I believe in miracles.

I’m grateful you’re here reading this. I hope that it brings you some peace and some ideas anew.