The Gratitude Seesaw

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Any time is the perfect time for being thankful, and right now, as we start a new year, it is absolutely perfect to take an inventory, so to speak, of your life and to be thankful for everything that you have, all that you have experienced, the person that you have become. I want to tell you about something that I have just implemented in my life during this Thanksgiving. I call it the gratitude seesaw, and here is how it works: you start thanking someone for all the good and the “bad” experiences that you have had with them and then they return the favor by thanking you. You thank the person for one thing and then that person thanks you for one thing and you go back and forth again, hence the seesaw. This is such a beautiful experience and as you participate in it, you will realize that your emotions and feelings of gratitude become stronger as you start thinking of the memories that you have shared in the past year with the person.

This can be also be done with someone that you are ending a relationship with. Sometimes relationships end, and endings are merely there so that new beginnings can come your way. However, these endings don’t have to be a bad thing, and they truly are not “bad.” Every relationship has served the purpose at the time that you were in it, for both yourself and the other person involved. Therefore, I know that you can find things that you have enjoyed about this person and that you can be thankful for. Not only that, the things that you have considered as bad experiences within the relationship may not really be that way. All you need is a change of perspective to realize that those moments were necessary for your own growth and to make you the person you are now. What if you thanked the person for giving you that opportunity to grow and to heal? That, in itself, is such a powerful experience.

It is such a great way to make a relationship stronger with someone that is currently in your life, but it also allows a relationship that is ending or shifting to heal. Please note that you can have this experience with someone even if they are no longer in your life ~ if someone has passed away or is no longer physically in your life, you can intend to send them these messages of gratitude for all that you have shared, both the good and bad, and allow their spirit to receive it. You can then heal and release the emotions that go along with any relationship.

There is a book that I have to recommend you to read or reread if it is one that you are familiar with, and that is The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch. You may be asking, “how can I thank someone for hurting me or making me feel bad?” Well, what if I told you that this person did this horrible thing to you so that you were able to experience forgiveness and to be able to grow? What if I told you that they did this horrible thing to you because they loved you? I know that this may be hard to imagine, but it is so true. I have to say, from experience, that someone I loved and that I still do love very much told me something that he had done which hurt me and I felt that this was just so horrendous that I wasn’t sure if I could continue to associate with him. Then, after some time and going back to reread the above mentioned book as well as trying to understand what had occurred in addition to my growth as a result, I was able to forgive and thank him. If this did not happen, then I would not have been able to heal from something that had occurred in my past, and that healing was necessary.

I challenge you to get on the gratitude seesaw. I challenge you to be thankful for the things you may have thought were so horrible at the time, for all the hurt that you feel someone may have caused you, and of course for all the things you see as wonderful in your life. All of the things and the people are there for so many reasons, and it is up to you to decide what those reasons are.

Here’s to a beautiful year ahead in 2009, that reveal your dreams manifested in your life, and many more experiences of the beauty of life.