Estimated Reading Time: 10 mins
How do you start to improve life when the majority of your life experiences have been challenging?
If you’re anything like how I use to be, you may feel you’ve been cheated out of having a good life.
The perception you have of life and the things that take place in it have been heavily dominated by the influences of things that have gone before.
Past traumatic events have shaped the way you view the world.
The potential for having better when you’re accustomed to mostly experiencing some form of mental distress, can feel like a fairy tale beyond reach.
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Our doubts tend to outweigh our faith. We’ve grown dependent on the reliability of our eyes, forming our beliefs from the things we’ve seen.
My experiences meant I would subconsciously always expect life to go wrong.
When I did experience periods of peace, I’d become apprehensive never expecting it to last and my level of doubt would see the manifestation of such results each time.
Life events would go well but the entire time I would mentally brace myself for the impact of devastation.
It was a deeply sad way of moving through life and it’s very possible that you may relate.
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Beliefs
What we see can be downright compelling, but what we believe is what matters most.
The reason why many of us are drawn into a cycle of never getting ahead is due to our belief systems.
Our beliefs become based on our experiences, and it’s easier to perceive things negatively because of the vivid details of our past.
We know exactly what lack, struggle, mental torment, broken relationships, and chaotic living looks like and this is why faith can be challenging to implement.
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Faith is the practice of exercising one’s ability to visualise and anticipate the unknown, unseen, and unexperienced and naturally, it can be tough to do.
Whilst you’re alive however, you owe yourself the opportunity to flip life’s script no matter your age, background, or life experiences.
Just because you started at a disadvantaged point doesn’t mean you must remain living a disadvantaged life.
The problems you’ve faced do not determine where you end – you do.
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Reversing Perspective
I want to give a new perspective to our old experiences.
This might be difficult to believe but despite the hardships you’ve endured, there will always be someone who’s had to endure worse.
The severity of our experiences can make this difficult to fathom but ultimately, it’s the truth.
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We automatically feel empathetic towards those enduring harsher conditions than us because our personal insight helps us relate.
It brings to our conscious attention that what we went through despite being awful, could have been much worse.
To create an opportunity for developing our faith then, we need to begin shifting our perspective and its focus away from the negative.
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Thinking negatively, creates fertile breeding ground within our subconscious for further negativity, and as such attracts negative outcomes.
If we are to experience life differently, this will require modification.
We must begin with small steps and part of this is not just acknowledging the intensity of our experience, but to recognise moreso that we survived.
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The Power of Gratitude
The gravity of my problems diminished the level of value I placed in expressing thoughts of gratitude previously.
It wasn’t until I begun regularly practicing thankfulness, that I found the depth of its potency in my life moving forward.
The brain is a pro at dwelling on uncomfortable life events and experiences.
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If we dig up the archives of our past, it’s always easier to remember bad experiences in detail than it is the good.
The same can be said when it comes to everyday life. We remember poor customer service far more than we do good service.
We’re wired to give more focus to problems, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing if our default response is solution focused.
For those dominated by their emotions it can be catastrophic, but for those dominated by their faith, problematic events are an opportunity to build resilience and develop character.
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Practicing gratitude is therefore a way of shifting our minds attention from life’s problems and giving concentration to life’s blessings.
In doing so, we minimise the associated negative emotions of our problems, and bring to the forefront, feelings that contribute to moving our lives forward more positively.
It provides a foundation from which we can develop in our faith by recognising existing blessings and learning how to anticipate good things for our lives.
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Like the past me, you may feel you don’t have much to be grateful for but there are things which also like me, you may overlook daily on a basic level.
If you’re able to read this post, we can confirm you have the ability to see, you awoke from sleep this morning, and you have access to technology.
These are blessings that won’t be applicable for many and are compelling reasons for why you should be grateful.
Similarly, if you’ve eaten a meal, remember that millions are days into the misery of starvation – another reason to be grateful.
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If you can practice daily listing all the blessings you typically overlook, that practiced attitude of gratefulness will have a distinctive and favourable impact on your emotions.
Your mind’s perspective will slowly transition, and you’ll find yourself drawing on the positive from every future situation by default.
Rather than feeling immediate overwhelm at the onset of problems, with your renewed perspective, you’ll accept the situation finding yourself grateful it’s not worse than it is.
Most importantly, you’ll focus on productive solutions because the soil of your subconscious mind has been fertilised with the productive seeds of gratitude.
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The Benefits of Gratitude
Gratitude inspires peace of mind and once you’ve tasted it, you’ll find yourself determined to protect it.
Proactively remedying frantic situations is a means by which we provide such protection, but aside this there are additional benefits that subconsciously follow.
We develop in resilience, optimise productive thinking, build our dependence on proactive action, and increase in self-confidence – qualities which improve our quality of life.
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To summarise the power and benefits of gratitude, I’ll put it simply.
Gratitude leads to the promotion of positive feelings. Healthy emotions feed the soil of our mind influencing more positive thinking.
Positive thinking allows us to give productive perspective to life events and contributes toward our ability to deal with such events.
Dealing with such events develops our character, increasing our gratitude, inner peace, and the strength of our faith.
This combination in its entirety, feeds a cycle eventually leading to productive outcomes and an improved quality of life overall.
To change your present from your past, start small but most importantly, start with gratitude.
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you – 1 Thessalonians 5:18
