This past weekend was my birthday so I took a little break for my birthday from posting. But one of the greatest tenants of living in gratitude is to actively encourage yourself. Most of the negative scripts that subconsciously run through our minds and break us away from the path of gratitude are actually brought to us by friends and family. Sometimes we have to close our ears and guard our minds and hearts.
I’m reminded of the Tri-City Singers & Donald Lawrence’s song “Encourage Yourself.” The lyrics of the second verse are: Sometimes you (sometimes you) have to encourage yourself/Gotta pat your own self on the back, yeah, yeah/Sometimes you have to speak victory during the test/And no matter how you feel (no matter how you feel)/Speak the word over your life, oh, oh/Speak the word, and you will be healed (you will be healed)/Speak over yourself (speak over yourself)/Encourage yourself (encourage yourself) in the Lord.
So today I wanted to talk about some practical tips to engage in encouraging yourself.
Encouragement on a monthly basis
One of the ways we can encourage ourselves on a monthly basis is by engaging in reflection. What’s different about this month than last month? The issue with this kind of open-ended reflection is it may cause you to reflect on the negative things. You may consider all the mistakes you made instead of all the wins. This is why I have a google drive encouragement folder. This folder contains the compliments & words of encouragement others have made to uplift me throughout the month or even years prior. It is helpful to be reminded of who I am. Record the good so that you can remind yourself.
Encouragement on a weekly basis
Engage in weekly record keeping. For me, this means I have a weekly work journal. What are my work wins for the week? What did I accomplish? I also have a weekly spiritual journal. What are my spiritual wins for the week? What did Pastor say this week that’s giving me life that I need to carry with me this week? I also engage in weekly habit tracking. Did I take 10,000 steps every single day this week? Awesome. Did I read a whole book? Cool.
Encouragement on a daily basis
God is my refuge and strength. In order for me to walk in that, believe that, and practice that, I need to have contact with God. My prayer life looks different on different days. If I can spend a whole hour with God, praying aloud and singing in my studio apartment, that’s awesome. If all I can do is pull up Jireh on Spotify and listen to it while I read a single devotional on the Bible app, that’s ok. What’s been giving me some life these days is prayer journaling. I spend part of my morning praying on the page. I think this helps me start the day in a place of confidence and not in a place of scarcity and anxiety.
Gratitude seems all fun and dandy until we’re going through a dark night of the soul–until fear or despair gets a grip on us and we can’t seem to think of anything else. I’m not talking about clinical depression or any psychological illness. I’m talking about grief or short-term sadness from an event or the bit of anxiety when we’re gearing up to have a big milestone. Sometimes it’s just hard to be grateful.
This is why it’s so important to already have a gratitude practice in place. When you are gloomy or thinking about how you need a nuclear saferoom because you’re afraid the world will end– you should just follow through with your gratitude routine. So go ahead and form the habit. Start a Friday night text thread gratitude list with your bestie. Write every morning or evening in a gratitude journal. Take a break during your workday to be grateful for what’s happened so far during the day. Use your lunch break as a gratitude break.
Life is not linear; there are ebbs and flows. There are mountains and valleys. Having healthy habits in place that soothe your spirit will help you find your way. This is not one of those just do it or fake it till you make it strategies. . This is just a practice of reflection on what is good in your life. It could be something simple. Like I had two meals today. Someone gave me a compliment. My coffee was delicious. My shoes are really comfortable. Small wins are still wins. And being grateful for where we are and what we are experiencing can only beget even better fruit.
Today I want to talk to you about having a gratitude practice. Nothing but breathing and your heart beating come automatically in this life; everything else takes practice.
Why Practice Gratitude?
I don’t know why… I could tell you the science, but somehow gratitude automatically elevates the mood, and takes the focus off of us and what we’re not doing and what we’ve been given. A lot of twelve-step programs, and many spiritual communities encourage their followers to engage in gratitude or gratitude-related practices daily.
When/How to Practice Gratitude?
One of my favorite things to do before I start my morning prayers is to just take stock of all I have and write in my gratitude list. In the past, I’ve had a gratitude text chain with friends where we just texted 3-5 things we were grateful for every single day. You don’t have to write in a gratitude journal every day or start a text chain to start a gratitude practice. You don’t even have to say it out loud (although I recommend it). You can just look around the room you’re in right now and silently acknowledge the blessings God has given you. You can sit in your car for a minute and thank God that you have a car, that you have the skill to drive, and that you have all the physical health and functioning to be able to drive. Those are all blessings. Before you eat lunch, thank God for the food and all the people who had a hand in making it. The people who farmed it, the people who processed it, and the people who shipped it all the way to you.
If you already do those things, another way to practice gratitude is to get involved in your community. Volunteer at the shelter or the food bank. Donate your time more than your money.
Benefits of Practicing Gratitude?
It statistically makes people happier by over 10 percent than people who don’t practice it. Emmons & McCullough, 2003; Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005
This month is going to be all about feel-good vibes. We’re gonna dive deep into how to live out gratitude. I may talk about some stories in the Bible, some biblical affirmations to help you speak truth to the darkness, or just talk about my birthday! That’s right May has my born day. I was born on a Saturday during the Sabbath, so it’s only natural that I spend my birth month giving thanks for what God has done and talking about rest and all that is good.
As we breathe
As you probably know, breath is something that we spend a lot of time talking about in church, and singing songs about in worship. Breath is often mentioned in scripture and it is a medical phenomenon that we still really don’t know a lot about in 2022. Breath is automatic, we don’t know what starts it or finishes it and just know that when it stops we need to make it to the ER ASAP.
In the bible, there are names for God based on the concept of breath. He is the Breath of Life. It is also believed that the name YHWH actually comes from the sound made when breathing. It is important to note that an automatic function that we have a lot of mystery about is attributed to God in such a deep way. That God is the start and finish of every breath.
Breathing In Gratitude
There are a few stories in the bible where I think to myself “ man what a crazy time to be grateful.” They come in the story of Jonah, Job, and Daniel.
Let’s start with Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of a whale after being swallowed up for his disobedience to God’s call/ to rescue him from drowning. In Jonah 2: 9, Jonah is within the belly of the whale when he says “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!” I mean when you think about it one way, he had a reason to be grateful. He was alive. But the other half of the situation is he has no idea when and if he’s ever gonna leave the belly of the whale, or if he will leave alive after passing through the whale’s digestive track. And then right after Jonah’s expression of heartfelt gratitude, he gets vomited out and onto dry land. I mean what a crazy story.
Then there’s Job. He finds out all of his kids have gotten killed in one fell swoop while hanging out at their eldest siblings’ house and he thanks, God. He says naked I came into the world and naked I will go. It’s a crazy story.
Then there’s Daniel who was told not only not to praise God, but to definitely not do it in the window or he will be put to death. The verse says in the ESV version “When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.” Daniel went about his business with His God; he did not care.
While we can pass off these stories as man, that’s crazy. The real lesson they were so cray .. is that they were so tight with God and their relationship was so deep that they could be grateful, anyway, and on any day. The reason gratitude needs to be likened to breathing is so that it could be automatic. It needs to be automatic like Daniel, who didn’t need to think about the regulation that just passed, he just did his routine. He just walked daily with God and thanked him thrice a day and wasn’t going to stop for anyone.
What are the non-negotiables in your life? Do you not drink milk after brushing your teeth? Do you not turn on social media before noon? Do you have any spiritual non-negotiables? Like I won’t leave the house without praying, or start my car without talking to God? Let’s think about inviting God and gratitude into our lives more often, so that we may be able to suck the marrow out of life and live in the sunlight.
