how to use gratitude and amazement to welcome the future?
The time has come in which the year is ending and we are looking at the time that went by. During this time; it becomes harder to remember all the things that we are grateful for that happened in the course of our year.
Depending on our mindset, we can look at things from a negative perspective. We can take on an attitude of lack, fear and resentment about everything that we didn’t accomplish during the year and for everything that went wrong.
This is a time of looking at the past with eyes of wisdom and a desire to learn. When we cannot see the good things that happened and we can only look at the things that we can improve or “fix” next year, we are missing half of the reflection of the new year.
Some people see it as unnecessary to go over all the wonderful moments and look at them with gratitude and amazement, as it might not seem as productive. I don’t know if this is you, but I think that the end of the year is the time to look at things with a good lens. The rose-colored glasses need to be pulled out now.
Why exactly is gratitude the most important?
Everyone tells you to be grateful, but what does it do energetically?
Gratitude is a strength that few people open up to. You know, in this world, many see positive emotions as weakness. I mean, I think they see emotions as a vulnerability and they are out there believing they are some sort of alien that is better than everyone else because their heart is so cold that no one can hurt them. But we know how the plot of those movies goes, right?
The cold-hearted villain ends up crying and bawling their eyes out because they made a horrible, heartless mistake that hurt one of their loved ones and they didn’t say they loved them before they died and now they have to suffer the consequences.
Now I am not saying that you are going to suffer the consequences of being cold, but you might reconsider opening up a bit of happiness and emotions if this is you.
We need to live every (maybe not every single second) moment of our lives with gratitude. Not only of the surrounding people, but of the things that happen to us.
When we decide to be grateful, we are opening our hearts to the things that we loved the most about our year. I’ll tell you what happens in a second, but first let’s talk about amazement.
What about amazement?
The second factor that I think a lot of adults forget about when growing up is amazement. Looking at life with “I can’t freaking believe it” eyes. Not in the sense of not believing that you deserve good things, but in the sense of, life is so magical that I want to be its best friend. Think of a kid going to Disney for the first time. Wide-eyes, open mouth followed by jumping and laughing.
That is what amazement for life looks like. I am not saying that you should look exactly like a kid, but maybe whatever the adult version of that is.
Amazement is a type of gratitude. It is the gratitude that is unspoken.
We choose to be amazed, just as we choose to be grateful. And choose with what energy we show up to the new year.
We can choose to show up grumpy and believing that everything is the same, whining about how everything is f*ed up, or we can show up the way Elle Woods shows up, confident and knowing that everything will fall into place, and amazed by everything that is slightly cute.
Why should we be grateful and amazed?
If just knowing what gratitude and amazement are isn’t convincing enough, then let’s find out their effects.
We are grateful in order to appreciate the time that has gone by and create a base in which we can start the new year with strength, security and power.
We are amazed in order to keep ourselves open to possibilities and gifts from life that we often thought of as impossible.
By being grateful and amazed, we open up to creating a year that is full of things that we can be grateful and amazed at. The best part is that we can’t only be amazed and grateful for the year that has gone by, but we can show this as well as the year that is to come.
We can show to the future year right now how grateful we are for what it will bring us and how amazed we are for the doors it will open up for us.
It is about preparing for the best instead of preparing for the worst.
How do we do this?
The most important part about this process is asking yourself a bunch of questions. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself and prompts to understand where you stand regarding the past year and the upcoming one.
- What are the three most important things that happened in 2022 for you? Describe them and write about how you feel about them.
- What are the three things that you are proud you accomplished this past year?
- They don’t need to be “big”. Maybe what you accomplished was to take your first class of something or finally doing the dishes that really hard day.
- Write a gratitude note to 2022, mentioning all the things you are grateful for that happened that year
- If you have to write 5 pages, write 5 pages.
- What things got you amazed? What moments have made you open your eyes wider?
- Which were the lessons that you learned from your hard moments?
You now need to answer these questions for the upcoming years as well. As it had already happened. Start the gratitude before you actually need to be grateful for anything. You might hesitate to answer the last question to not jinx your year, but I believe we will learn lessons either way, so think about what are the lessons that you want to learn. Maybe it’s those that you think you didn’t fully learn last year.
Remember that January 1st isn’t the only moment for a fresh start, but we can create new beginnings for ourselves whenever we wish, and we can also start now.
