It’s Thanksgiving, a time to put differences aside with our families, our country and the world, long enough to experience gratitude. Thank heavens for this small moment. We have created such a culture of extreme polarization that current events whip us into a frenzy. What is all this about and how can gratitude help?
The Transformational Leadership and Coaching community has been invited to reflect on gratitude. I’d like to look at it from the perspective of how gratitude moderates our reactions to the polarization and extremes in our culture.
These extremes have crept up on us over the last thirty years. Most of it is credited to the influence of the internet and social media. It gives us instant access to information and every range of opinion. And maybe more important, it provides a platform to express rage and spread disinformation without a filter. It’s no wonder we are held captive to the reactivity this creates.
The Law of Polarity is an important concept to understand here. It tells us everything has it’s opposite and this dual contrast is needed and used regularly, like hot and cold, relaxed and tense and so on. Depending on what you’re experiencing in a moment, it tells you what you’d rather have. It helps inform your decisions and your actions.
But we forget that both extremes are often experienced at the same time. Your hands may be hot and your feet cold, your face relaxed and your shoulders tense. We accept it and deal with it. Our country was founded on principles of acceptance of great diversity. The differences have made us great.
In Buddhism, the concept of dualism encourages you to adapt a neutral or non-dualistic perspective. It allows you to see both ends of a polarity with equal acceptance.
I see gratitude as serving a similar function. It provides what I call a “wisdom perspective” that lifts you above polarization to see, accept and take on a higher order understanding.
Let me explore this further – How can gratitude moderate our polarized culture?
Helps Focus On Appreciation
Gratitude, as a function of appreciation and thanks, is a loving perspective. It’s lost when you’re in the throes of competition, anger or outrage. While those hot emotions serve an important purpose, it’s the softer ones that give us the most comfort, joy and ease in body and mind.
Gratitude opens your heart and allows appreciation for things that may be absent from your attention. When family relationships are complicated, gratitude allows you to find appreciation, despite the difficulties.
When you put aside conflicts or problems and allow the graciousness of gratitude in, you have created a transcendent moment.
Broadens Your Perspective
With gratitude, you get out of your way to consider what is good. You put the negatives aside, you drop into a space that allows more perspectives to be considered. It’s doesn’t disallow all the truths, in fact, there may be many perspectives that are true about your feelings for a person or a situation. But, it allows the ones that you appreciate to be the focal point of expression.
Giving voice to a fuller view of a person or situation can serve you well, particularly when there are problematic elements. Gratitude finds the broader perspective and illustrates that good and bad can exist at once.
The expression of gratitude broadens your mind to move away from fixating on a polarized view.
Provides A More Compassionate View
Gratitude is an expression of benevolence. It’s a higher order emotion along with kindness, sympathy and empathy. These are the emotional expressions that are lost in our polarized culture of accusation, blame, full frontal assault, self-absorption and greed.
It starts with yourself. When you have compassion for yourself, understanding your flaws and working with them, you develop a more mature self-concept. It is often the gift provided from rising above difficulties – a broader more compassionate perspective.
Gratitude enhances our ability to effortlessly extend compassion to ourselves and others.
Helps You Accept Diversity
When you express gratitude, at its heart, there is often acceptance of the diversity that others bring into your experience. Recognizing this diversity gives you more opportunity for growth.
If everyone and everything were the same, we’d be bored and find dissatisfaction in the sameness. It’s the push and pull of our differences that gives us life experiences from which we grow. Amidst the diversity, everything contains a perspective of gratitude when we choose to find it.
Recognizing and having gratitude for the diversity others bring expands our life experience.
What can you express gratitude for during this season of Thanksgiving? See if you can find it in the midst of things that cause you discomfort. Notice how it stretches and expands your ability to accept the polarity and extremes we are living with. How do you choose to function in this volatile environment? We are being challenged to find our way with more balance and grace. Gratitude helps us find the Buddhist non-dualist perspective.
Does any of this speak to you? Are self-compassion and gratitude something you need help finding? I welcome you to reach out. My Transformational Life Coaching can help. See my website www.spectrumtransformation.com and consider attending my upcoming workshop “2017 Manifestation Review” on December 8th. It’ll help you understand the direction your life is flowing right now and clarify where you want to go. Use my Free Consultation link – I’d love to hear from you! #transformationalpresence, #Createaworldthatworks, @centerfortransformationalpresence
