You Can Start Your Day Burning Your Toast And End Up With Gratitude

A gratitude journal isn’t the only way to change the world.

Have you had this happen? You make a vow to turn your life around and contribute positive energy to the planet. You’re not even sure what that means, but it sounds good. The way things have been going lately in your neck of the woods, it can’t hurt.

So you follow some guru’s advice and invest in a notebook. You call it your gratitude journal and get settled with some herbal tea and a sweet-smelling candle before you go to sleep. You write down some things that happened that day you’re grateful for, snuff the candle and turn out the light.

Then you get out of bed to brush your teeth again to get the taste of the funky tea out of your mouth, but hey, no biggie. You’re being the change you want and all that.

In no time, you’re hunkered under the covers with sweet, grateful dreams lulling you to sleep.

You wake up on time feeling all good and powerful, remember the exercise, and think, this shit works.

Then you get out of bed and head for the stairs and stub your toe on the skateboard your teen left in the hallway.

“What the f…” you start to yell, but then you remember the swear jar next to the toaster. So you hop into the kitchen and start breakfast and the wake-everybody-up-so-they-don’t-miss-the-bus routine.

Coffee’s perking, toast’s a-toasting, but nobody’s getting up. So a quick jog to the bottom of the stairs to rouse the troops, skirting the skateboard this time, only to be greeted by complaints about the hour from hubs (or wifey or SO). So an argument ensues, and before you know it, you smell burning toast.

“What the f&%j?” you yell, dashing back to the kitchen.

“Mom!!!! A dollar in the swear jar for the F-bomb.”

Yeah, they can’t get out of bed, but they can nail you for the right of free expression.

This is why my life sucks, you say to yourself, all thoughts of your gratitude journal gone up in smoke, just like the last of the bread you had burned to a crisp.

Used to happen to me, too.

I’d be grateful as all get out when things went my way. In fact, I had a gratitude journal bulging with items that I used to light up my life.

A few months after I began keeping track (full disclosure: on occasion, I’d make up a good feeling or two when the well went dry, just like confessing pretending sins when I was seven years old on the days I had to go to Confession. Seriously, what mortal sin can a first grader commit?).

On the whole, though, I was determined to see if this gratitude stuff worked.

When, after a ten-year dating drought, I found myself engaged to be married, I said, yes. I’m definitely grateful for that.

Color me changing my tune when my fairy-tale wedding became a nightmare, ending up in the divorce courts a few short years later. Lost in the heartbreak was my gratitude journal, and I haven’t used it since.

But you wouldn’t know it from the way I lead my life.

I’m a gratitude junkie.

Not because I write anything down at night anymore, but because I try to live gratitude, not just make lists.

When I started my gratitude journal, I was content with my life. I no longer had a teenager to plant skateboards as an obstacle course. Well, they weren’t invented when she was an adolescent, but we had hair crises and endless complaints that started with, “Moooooommmmm!” signaling I was in mom jail again for washing her favorite jeans or some such.

No, by the time I was all looking to the light and being positive all over the joint, I’d turn off the night lamp thanking my lucky stars I didn’t have anyone bugging me when I got home from work. It was easy to wrack up a dozen or so gratitude bullet points at bedtime. I had no big complaints about my life.

After the divorce, things took a turn. I celebrated my seventieth birthday facing the need to earn a living again. My health took a nosedive, and I had one surgery after another, once cancer scare after another. Friends and family began dying on me. Welcome to the golden years.

I had a choice to make, one you’ve probably faced, regardless of your age. How to maintain emotional balance and courage when things go wrong? Whether it’s little things like a string of mishaps that throw off your morning — stubbing your toe, forgetting your phone on your way to work — or a gut punch like losing your job before the holidays?

Where do gratitude and positive thinking fit in these scenarios as coping strategies. Can telling yourself you’re grateful the sun rose to compensate for news your spouse was in a terrible auto accident?

In my darkest days a decade ago, when I believed my dreams were over, I recalled reading a study passed out during my training as an AIDS volunteer. It struck me powerfully at the time and seemed to be the reminder I needed thirty-some years later.

Researchers asked former holocaust prisoners what they believed allowed them to survive the horrors of the camps. The running thread through the stories was that they gave gifts. A crust of bread, a scrap of clothing. The giving kept alive their belief in their humanity in an environment that did everything possible to crush it.

Generosity, gratitude and humility are intertwined as life-affirming qualities. When we are up against the wall, we need positive affirmations to remind us that we matter, that we are capable, that we can survive our life. Even if the annoyances are of a lower order than a concentration camp or a life-threatening illness.

Think back to a time your day started out with some inconvenience that colored the rest of your morning, or your meetings at work. Did you find yourself saying it’s always this way, and slog through the day disgruntled and bad-tempered? Who’d blame you?

But suppose you said at each point of frustration, yeah, I stubbed my toe, but I’m grateful I didn’t break it. The toast burned, but thankfully, we have cereal. And if your crisis is a higher order of magnitude? Some losses are unimaginable. I get that. Friends and beloved family members die.

But somewhere in that massive grief, could their be an acknowledgment that it wasn’t your whole circle of friends. As it was for some of my friends in the AIDS community. Or your whole family wiped out. As it was for a family of seven who died in an apartment fire in New York recently.

I can recall a time in my life when the notion of saying it could be worse sounded trivial compared to my complaints. But now I know that whatever I come up with to offset my daily annoyances is absolutely true.

When the IRS recently caught a mistake on my tax return and assessed me additional tax, I momentarily blew my stack, until I looked out my window (yes, I live in a mixed neighborhood where I see Mercedes Benz on the road and beggars), and saw a homeless encampment on the steps of the church across the street.

Thank you, I said to myself, for the reminder.

Trust me, I’d rather not pay more tax, but I am more than grateful I’m not homeless.

These thoughts are a habit with me. Perhaps my life pushed me to the wall to get me to realize that I have a choice.

Yes, I’m going to feel awful about a divorce, about ill health, about going back to work. Of course, I will grieve losing loved ones and have days when I feel the weight of difficult circumstances. A habit of gratitude hasn’t turned me into Julie Andrews, always singing about my favorite things on top of a mountain.

I believe in feeling feelings, be they joy or sadness. But I don’t see the percentage in wallowing anymore. It is my choice also to see the alternatives in life. Things can always be worse. Just look at the headlines.

My takeaway for you if it’s helpful.

There’s no crime in feeling sad or disappointed in life. But it’s a win whenever you can lighten your load. Showing compassion for others in your time of trial, an acknowledgment that others have it worse, that you have blessings you may not realize.

If you can’t come up with something to be grateful for in the moment, the next time your boss reams you out unfairly or the cool guy doesn’t call you back, say to yourself, at least I’m not an 80-year-old lady living alone with bad knees and a big tax bill to pay.

And in the meantime, I wish all your toast pops up fragrant and your preferred shade of gold and life runs smoothly 24/7. It would be a first!

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll make sure you don’t miss a word. Thank you for reading.