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Gratitude is a Super Power!

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I am grateful to be looking at gratitude yet again this blog!
Gratitude is an awesome superpower. I read recently that one of the most powerful statements you can make, feel or think is ‘thank you’. Thank you to others and yourself too.
 
It is so helpful to remember to be thankful to all those people in our lives who have been motherly, kind and caring toward us, including of course our own maternal mothers, to whom we owe so much, including our lives. Remembering to be thankful to friends, family and strangers too for the kindness they show us in all sorts of ways is powerful to promote our happiness and peace of mind. We'll talk more about gratitude for mothering kindness next blog, as it will be Mother's Day weekend. I'll be on board travelling from Canberra to Sydney!
 
It is also great to be thankful to others who give us the opportunity to be kind to them. This includes, friends, family, pets, strangers and of course our children or anyone we care for.

It's great to remember to tune into our wise selves to be kind and thankful to ourselves too. Seeing ourselves be a positive force in the world, being kind and grateful creates a happy perception. We can reinforce this goodness by being thankful to ourselves. We can be grateful to ourselves for doing our best to be a kind, positive force in the world. Remembering also to forgive ourselves and others for all those so called ‘mistakes’, more helpfully known as learning opportunities. 
 
The opportunities to extend kindness do not always come in the ways we expect and sometimes these kind acts are received without thanks. I find it helpful to thank myself, especially during those times like when I have spent a lot of time and effort doing something like making a family meal which is received with 'I don't like this!' Resting in my intention to have prepared a healthy meal and thanking myself helps to prevent resentment. A space I  have known very well. 

Sometimes extending kindness, especially as parents, can be in the form of a strong boundary like ‘please, don’t speak to me like that’, or ‘no, you can’t do that’. Such Kindness always has the intention to protect others from harm.

I can remember the need for such a strong kind boundary many years ago when I needed to enforce the ‘no sleeping with phone rule’ with my then thirteen-year-old. As I was saying goodnight to them, I discovered the phone under their bedclothes. I removed the phone and there was much subsequent protesting.  I needed to check in with my wise self to remember that my intention was to prevent harm and for them to get a good night’s sleep. I was then able to thank myself for being courageously kind, as the protests continued.  
 
More about gratitude and its awesome benefits next blog.
With love, appreciation and very best well wishes to us all 


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Comparing, Who and How?

7/27/2016

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How do you compare yourself to others?
 As we said in last weeks blog post  No Need to Compare, we compare ourselves to friends, online friends, siblings, neighbors, celebrities, workmates, fellow students or anyone, in many different ways. We compare ourselves as fatter, thinner, smarter, funnier, more popular or attractive. This habit of comparing ourselves to others is often a well-established, unconscious pattern.
 
This comparing can involve focusing on others’ upside and our downside or the reverse.  We can compare ourselves and conclude others are more or less popular, attractive, smart, successful or talented than us. Unhelpfully we can lead us to feel either superior or inferior, both of which undermine our confidence and happiness.
 
We are all certainly unique and have different qualities, talents, interests and experiences that help to shape who we are. We have no need to compare our unique qualities with those of others in an effort to feel superior or inferior.  Doing so is detrimental to our happiness and confidence.
 
Have you been thinking about what attributes you have been gifted with and how you can do your best to have fun and share them to benefit others?   
 
Comparing yourself to others in any way is harmful to your self-confidence and won’t make you feel good about yourself.

How do we compare ourselves to others?
We compare ourselves to others by
  1. Feeling we are somehow better than them
This tendency to compare ourselves and feel superior only gives us a false short-term hit of feeling good which will quickly become the cause of us feeling bad.  Thinking you are better than someone else will only make you feel good until it starts to feel bad.
Feeling good or finding entertainment in others misfortune is equally unhelpful.  Again this quickly causes us to feel yucky. Enjoying the misfortunes of others is toxic to our self-esteem.  Compassion is the only kind response to any pain. 
  1. Feeling we are somehow worse than them
When we compare our qualities or lives to others and find lack we erode our self-confidence.  The truth is we are all different; we are all a unique mixture of positive and not so positive attributes, characteristics and experiences. All our lives are a mixture of positive and negative.  We can only know the positive because of the negative 
When we focus on what is going wrong, our weaknesses or ways we are not as good as others we undermine our confidence.  Instead when we choose to pay attention to what is going right, our unique gifts and strengths and how we can use these to be of benefit to others, our confidence and happiness grows. 
 
Humility and Inferiority
There is a difference between humility and inferiority.  Inferiority is unkind.  It is when we put ourselves down. Humility on the other hand is the absence pride or feeling better than others, however it is not about feeling worse than others.   Humility involves not taking yourself too seriously, being able to laugh warmheartedly when we make mistakes. Being able to laugh at yourself enhances your confidence.  Mocking yourself destroys it.   Inferiority, criticizing, mocking or belittling yourself like pride and will erode your confidence. 

Understand the difference between humility and inferiority.  Pride and inferiority both involve comparing ourselves to others (pride as better and inferiority as worse). Both are unkind and harmful.  Humility is doing your best without comparison. Humility will nurture your self-esteem and inferiority will destroy it.  

Make efforts to do your best to be better for others and not better thanothers - this promotes confidence and happiness for all.  

Next week - Comparing - How Can I Stop?


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