Be Grateful

by His Holiness Gyalwang Drukpa, Jigme Pema Wangchen

While we are busy complaining and looking for reasons to dislike or be angry with our circumstances and the people around us, we still expect ourselves to be happy. But if our minds are only looking for problems, how can we be? If gratitude and appreciation are lacking in our lives, we will miss the path to happiness.

What is going well in your life?

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. ALDOUS HUXLEY, BRAVE NEW WORLD

People often tend to focus on what is going wrong in their lives, rather than giving themselves a chance to dwell on what’s going well. It is true that we can learn very helpful lessons from things that happen which we would describe as mistakes. And learning such lessons allows us to develop our skills, our compassion and the ability to see things from alternative points of view. However, sometimes I think we forget there are great lessons to be had from the parts of life that fill us with joy. Simply the act of shining a light on those good feelings encourages them to grow and infuse the rest of our life, or at least the rest of our day.

Why not celebrate and develop the things we do well? We can’t all be good at everything, and while it’s no bad idea to challenge ourselves and look for new areas in which we can learn, we can also hone the skills we have been blessed with. After all, they then become gifts with which we can improve other people’s lives in some way. When we feel like we are a very good fit with what we are doing – whether that is in our job, our relationship or any other aspect of life – we don’t need to spend so much time looking around the next corner for happiness because we feel it in our contentment and our relaxed confidence. When we get back to the simplicity of doing something well, we are lucky enough to remind ourselves of the essence of life.

We seem to find it much easier to believe in the negative side of things (this is where our belief is at its strongest) and we have no confidence in the good things. But to change life in the positive sense, let’s start with believing that happiness, joy, peace – all the great things – can happen with us first. We can be fearless if we want to. So we might wake up in the morning and think for a few moments about the loving people in our lives, that we have a roof over our heads, a cup of tea first thing and the ingredients in our cupboards for a good breakfast. We then think about the things we are grateful for that we don’t have today: illness, for example, if we are in good health, blindness, if we can see, homelessness, if we have a home. This kind of thinking not only helps to bring our happiness to the surface, but also to tune in our awareness. As we train our minds to consider the things in our lives that make us want to say ‘thank you’, we begin to notice more of them and take fewer things for granted. The other benefit is that by practising this kind of thinking we also help to develop our compassion for others; we are able to acknowledge suffering and have the strength to look directly at it, so that we may also have the motivation to help those in need.