Being Grateful in the Hallway

Every light worker touts the magic of gratitude.

But how can you be grateful when life sucks?

I personally call this, “The hallway.” Being grateful in The Hallway is non-negotiable. There are light workers who love to tout gratitude as a value and way of life but who don’t take into account the shadow — or dark side. (We call those, “rookies” — new to the “high on life” way of living). We all must deal with the shadow side of ourselves and the shadow side of life. Life has peaks and valleys. Life has a balance.

They can’t all be good days.

What matters is how you handle the days that aren’t so happy and glorious. Problems occur. People die. Things we adore leave us or break down. Situations we depend on come to completion. We part ways with a partner. Basically, we go through a major life change. That’s when we find ourselves in The Hallway.

What is The Hallway?

The Hallway is where we stand with one door closed behind us, usually ever-so-unwillingly, as we wait for that next door to open. We don’t know when that door is going to open. The handle doesn’t turn for us when we turn it; we don’t have the key. The only solution is to wait it out until conditions change. But it’s brutal. We want to jump out of our body in discomfort.

How do we find gratitude in that?

Conventional wisdom tells us, “Be grateful things aren’t worse, someone out there has it worse than you.” This isn’t my favorite cliche because I think it minimizes our suffering. We should accept and honor our suffering — then keep moving forward.

I like to teach being grateful for the basics above all else. This way we aren’t minimizing the fact that, yes, life sucks. But it only sucks at the moment. This is when you seek out things to be grateful for in abundance. We list the most basic things like food, water, shelter and space. Then we add on being grateful for more basic things in life like the sun coming out and having clean socks.

Does this fix things? Probably not. Taking action fixes things. If you feel stuck in that department, a good coach can help. You can schedule a session with me here.

This, however, can give us a better mindset. What we think we become. Our thoughts and beliefs dictate our actions and our actions create our life. So creating the ability to get out of The Hallway starts with good thinking. Gratitude contributes to that.

Gratitude also prevents us from becoming miserable cows.

Use gratitude as a coping skill. A one-minute mind shift. Of all the inventories we take in life, we can’t forget to take a gratitude inventory. If you need help with this principle, I’ve blogged some ideas for you here.

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