We’ve all heard the term “Choose Joy”. Maybe it’s on a coffee cup or a fridge magnet at your house. The idea that you can choose your way into a positive attitude is often accompanied by little nuggets of wisdom like "you can’t control other people, only yourself," or "you can’t change your circumstances, but you can change your attitude."
It’s good advice - focused control and positive reframing are valuable skills for resilience. If the person whose receiving them is in a neurotypical brain state. If they aren’t - if their primary concern is safety and survival, or if they are dealing with things like unmanaged physical or mental illness, grief, chronic stress, identity questions or an undiagnosed neurodevelopmental concern - it can feel very minimizing.
Often we don’t know what the people right in front of us are going through, just as they don’t really know what’s happening in our life. It’s human nature to try and hide our struggles under shame, competitive drive, or lethargic lack of motivation, behavior, anger, or under overcompensated joy. Take a step back and think about interactions you’ve had this week with your family, with colleagues and friends. How many of them are just surviving right now? How many of them could realistically choose joy?
Without coping skills and opportunities to practice them, changing your outlook from negative to positive is about as easy as changing the weather. There is a tool for finding joy (and practicing it too) that is simple, quick and trains your brain toward a more positive outlook. It’s gratitude and it does four really important things:
- It requires you to reflect on your day, your life, your behavior, or your situation. Active reflection even in times of heightened stress and trauma, gives you space to process what has, or is happening and your feelings about it.
- When you practice gratitude with others, it enhances relationships. You’re not giving the other person a lecture or trite advice, you are a supportive companion on their journey. You’re also providing an opportunity to practice a valuable skill.
- It encourages you to look at life as a balance. The good and the bad co-exist throughout our lives, throughout the world. Gratitude is a reminder that you can cope with both.
- Over time, gratitude becomes a coping skill that allows you to shift your perspective. The more you have opportunity to practice gratitude the more positive effect it has on your mental health especially in those times where at first glance there might not be a lot to be grateful for. In short, it helps make joy a more realistic choice.
So take up the challenge and shift your focus from attitude to gratitude. The internet is full of ideas that can help you incorporate gratitude into your life, like this video from the Greater Good Science Centre at USC Berkeley. Give it a try! You’ll be grateful you did.