Shonda Rhimes has a new essay on her website, Shondaland, about the importance of gratitude and how it helped her make sense of this last year. Since I am a cynical bitch who gets angry encountering people without masks at the store (which seems to be every time I go out), I needed to read this. Shonda isn’t all sunshine, affirmations and rainbows either, which I appreciate. She writes that it took her a long time to come up with things to be grateful for, but once she thought of one nice thing it started flowing. She understands the skepticism about it and this practice of gratitude has really helped her feel better and more positive overall. Here are some excerpts, but if you’re interested I recommend reading this at the source. Shonda is such a good writer that it’s well worth it. Plus it convinced me that I should find more things to be grateful for.
Gratitude can sometimes be hard to find. Many times in the past year, I’ve had a very hard time locating gratitude. It’s not simple to get yourself to reach the space inside to be grateful. But that space? That gratitude space?
If you open yourself to it, that space can feel like a hit of clean sweet oxygen from a mountain top. It can renew you. If you can find gratitude in your angriest moments, your saddest moments, your most hurt moments, you can rise out of the pain and into something better. The muck of life can be washed clean. If you can say yes to gratitude, you can step out of your darkest places and find a little light.
You are maybe rolling your eyes. Raising a not-so-nice finger. I hear you. But I don’t say this trying to give you some kind of mushy, self-help, heal-y, woo-woo guru talk. I say this as a practical matter…
I say this because now I know gratitude and gratitude knows me and it has fundamentally rearranged the way my brain works.
My point is, I understand that these days, reaching that gratitude space for you might feel harder than it’s ever felt before.
At my lowest moments, I have found a way to locate gratitude. The first time I did it, I was sure I was doing something futile and crazy. Woo-woo and stupid. A waste of my time.
It’s turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done…
Thinking of good things, finding things that I am grateful for is essential. Yes, I know it takes time. But you know what takes about the same amount of time? Complaining. So does whining and negativity. So does self-shaming. So does listing all the things that are wrong and not going your way, griping about all the reasons you can’t accomplish something, detailing all the excuses you have for not striving to be someone better than you were yesterday.
No one wants to be the person who drags herself and all the people around her down. The goal is to always be a person who is rising and lifting other people up along with us.
I love what she wrote about how it takes just as much time to be negative as it does to be positive. I don’t ever want to discount people mourning or being understandably frustrated and depressed at where we are now. Being sad and upset is perfectly reasonable, and Shonda acknowledges that while focusing on how gratitude has helped her.
About a month ago, around the holidays, I got myself a new notebook from Dollar Tree and did something similar to this. I wrote “Good Things about 2020” on one page and “What I’m looking forward to in 2021” on the next page. I put stickers on it to motivate myself more. It’s been sitting on my desk, but I haven’t looked at it since, so this is a good reminder. At the very top of my list is “learned to bake,” because I don’t remember baking anything before last year and now I love making bread. After that were things like “got to spend more time with my son” and “made new friends.” Plus I took so many cool classes over Zoom that I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. This year, hopefully by the fall, I look forward to meeting some of my new friends. I’m also so looking forward to getting vaccinated! Whenever I start to think about how mad I am that terrible people can ruin things, I will try to think of this list. I even came up with some new things today!
I saw this tweet below because this is a nurse who was tweeting about the importance of wearing masks. She had this pinned to her profile and I thought it was perfect.
there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil;is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good; joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness and truth.”“Grandfather, which wolf wins?” The Grandfather replied: “The one you feed.”
— RN MotherF’er CEN,CCRN (@Meidas_Kelly) December 30, 2020
Photos via Instagram and the picture on the frontpage is a screen shot from this video
Her “year of yes” book is well worth reading…
I enjoyed that as well.
I’m so happy to see her continue to be successful in every thing she does, and with a winning attitude. She’s a true role model and I’m going to read her book.
Gratitude helped me with depression. Things can always be worse so appreciating what is good and right in the current moment & time shifted my focus and outlook in moving forward.
I am on my second Daily Greatness journal (don’t know if you have this in the US) and part of that is that each day you set out your priorities and write down something you’re grateful for. During the last year the more I felt it was pointless to bother (I’m freelance and my work went off a cliff during first UK lockdown, I have also been dealing with depression on and off since I was a teenager), the more I encouraged myself to do it and honestly it has helped. Even if the ‘agenda’ section of the page stayed blank a lot of days!
There is always something to be grateful for (the sun shining, a good cup of tea, a warm home) and always something to make my priority for the day (go for a walk, cook something, sit and read a good book with a cup of tea). I’m so thankful to the friend who introduced me to the journal when I first started out freelance and it’s been a godsend during the pandemic.
I don’t find it genuine when filthy rich people tell others to have more gratitude especially during these times. Easy for her to say. She doesn’t have to worry about the things most people worry about daily.
same
I just can’t listen to Shonda Rhimes talk about gratitude when she turned Kyle Chandler’s character to pink mist on Grey’s. Still bitter about that.
As a kid I had a tumultuous time of things, due to many things, it was all a lot. My uncle taught me my gratefuls (was 6 or so). Every night I say gratefuls, who & what I’m grateful for & I think of all the things I appreciate. I also do so when I’m so upset & start to focus on negative. What you put out you attract, I’m a firm believer. Also what you are sad about someone else is wishing for. I really think it’s a good way to not dwell, it’s okay to be sad, mad, etc but you can’t live there. When my dad died this helped immensely, I as beyond destroyed but also so grateful that I got him as long as I did & it sucked so bad but that helped me when I wanted to scream at people, which isn’t like me but grief does weird things, lol.
I’m not some sugary sweet person, I’ll tell you straight but I’m kind unless someone behaves else wise. I’m an however a big believer in being grateful and in my gratefuls, as my 6 year ago of self called them. Life is hard embrace the good as much as you can.