POM - Peace of Mind
  • Home
  • POM Activities
  • About
  • Home
  • POM Activities
  • About

Gratitude is a Super Power!

Picture
Picture
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 


​

Just Like Me; Feeling Compassion For Me and All

3/1/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
​Do you ever find it difficult to be compassionate toward yourself and others? I wanted to explore this in the context of overcoming things that hinder me from realising my resolution to be more compassionate.

You may remember, (I only just did!) that this years blogs have been exploring 7 ways to overcome things that hinder us from working at and realising our goals and resolutions. I wanted to review the 4 we have looked at so far and add the 5th on this blog. I thought it may be useful to look at these in the context of being more compassionate to ourselves and others.

So a quick reminder of what we have covered 
  1. Resisting the temptation to work on too many things at once and instead choosing one gaol at a time to focus on . Establishing a gratitude practice has been a great place to start. So keeping that going with a new focus on 'compassion for self and others'.
  2. Finding ways to remember what our resolutions and goals are. These may include keeping a daily gratitude journal, journaling in general, post it notes, craftivism tea-towels, items of jewellery, and 'thank you's' to yourself and others.
  3. Watching self judgement and criticism. Instead of having unrealistic expectations of myself and others I have been doing my best to set achievable goals and rejoice when I achieve them! And accept when I don't and hop back on the horse! I am trying to be mindful of negative self-talk and instead power up that positive, kind encouraging friend voice. This helps to keep me motivated. 
  4. Being mindful about 'not going too big'. I have been watching that tendency I have to have unrealistic expectations of myself and others.  Instead I have been trying to remember to set myself achievable gaols and to remember to rejoice when I achieve them. And also rejoice when I remember to accept, trust  and learn from situations when I haven't achieved what I set out to. No POM shop for me at the moment!
So we are up to our 5th tip to prevent our enthusiasm for our best intentions from waining. 
5.  Avoid focusing on outer attainments, or the end result and instead focus on the ongoing feeling you would like to experience.
So instead of focusing on outcomes - things like weight loss, waiting without an outburst, getting this blog done, or even doing kind things, we can choose to focus on the feeling we would like to experience. This helps us with our motivation. Using the above examples, we could focus on ...
  • Having healthier eating habits and exercising to feel  good about our bodies and ourselves.
  • Working on being more patient and not reacting in provoking situations in order to feel more relaxed and calm.
  • Reducing criticism, judgment and negativity toward ourselves and others to feel happier and more compassionate.  
  • Writing this blog, not to get it done, but to feel happy about having done my best to share what is useful to me.
  • Doing kind things to feel happy and good about being that positive kind force in the world.  
  • Keeping a gratitude journal to feel happy about being a grateful, positive person
So lets focus on a feeling we would like to experience rather than on an outcome. I would like to feel more compassionate toward myself and others. So how do I do this? A couple of things that really help me with this include... 


1.  The wish is powerful 
I sometimes find myself in situations where I wish to feel compassion, but I actually don't! Situations like seeing someone lose it in traffic. I am tempted get in there and judge and criticise, but what I would really like to do is feel compassionate for them losing it. This wish to feel differently from how you actually feeling is very powerful in helping us to develop compassion. 

2.  Just Like Me
Pema Chodron has a very helpful practice to reduce judgment and criticism and develop compassion. It involves saying to yourself 'just like me' in situations where judgment comes up.

For example if we see someone losing it in traffic, we can say to ourselves, 'just like me'. This reminds us that we are all alike and have times when our unhelpful habits, like getting angry take hold. Remembering this  helps us develop compassion for them and for ourselves too.

It is important not to use this 'just like me' as another way to bash ourselves up, but rather to use it as an opportunity to remember to drop judgment and to be compassionate toward ourselves and others too. We are all susceptible to unhelpful habits. 

Interestingly we can use this 'just like me' practice when we see great things happening too. For example we may see someone helping someone. We can think 'just like me' and rejoice in their kindness and yours too.  Makes us all feel good!

We will look at the last 2 tips to prevent our enthusiasm for our best intentions from waining next fortnight. 

Gratitude, Kind Regards and Best Wishes, 
Maree xx ​
1 Comment
Zubia link
4/25/2020 07:12:27 pm

I loved your article - I can relate and practice the same. I have just got told about the Just Like Me meditation and I love it. Looking forward to applying this everyday to my life and teaching it to my clients. Would love to get in touch with you and know more about your learnings and how that meditation has been helping you. Well done and keep it up. Self-compassion is key to transforming and its helped me so much + being mindful of my auto-pilot bad mental habits.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Author

    Maree Fowler

    Archives

    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Subscribe to our mailing list and receive a free Mindfulness Meditation

    * indicates required

POM - Peace Of Mind.


Hours

Monday - Friday: 9am - 5pm

Email

maree@pom-melbourne.com