Give Yourself a Grateful Kiss!

Sometimes things happen in our lives that turn us inside out and back to front, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job or our health, but somewhere most of us find the strength to mentally get back up, dust ourselves off and manage to keep going, other times we feel we just can’t get up again, and why should we as we will just get knocked down again.

Have you ever had this feeling? Have you ever felt this way? What did you do? What can you do?

As children, our mothers gave us that special hug that ‘makes everything better’ or a kiss on our ‘hurt bit’ that makes the pain go away. As adults, this doesn’t work as we realise that wasn’t real.

How can we bring back positive thinking? How can we re-ignite our motivation? How can we give ourselves that ‘magic hug’ or ‘special kiss’?

There are ways in which we can help ourselves. Here are a few things that you might want to try.

1. List things you are grateful for
   The act of writing these down is therapeutic, forcing our minds to think of those positive things in our lives for a short while. For example, losing a loved one leaves a hole in our lives and a void which we feel we will never retrieve, but one thing we can be grateful for are the wonderful memories of that person and the positive impact they made in our lives. We might even think of those strengths that person passed on to us which we value and can put to good use.

2. List why you are grateful for these things
   This list now gets us thinking on a deeper level, because now we are forcing and encouraging ourselves to really dig deep down in our hearts and consider the ‘why’. For example, someone losing a loved one due to some terrible condition may go on to raise awareness to others which may in turn save someone else’s life would be a ‘why’.

We need to bring ‘grateful’ back into our lives and keep it there and using these lists can help us do that.