The balance of being grateful & still wanting more E104

August 1, 2023

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A good question to ask yourself is: Do I have the right balance between being grateful for what I have and still striving for more? What would your answer be? If you are not there yet, no worries, you are one of us. But let’s dive deeper into what we can do to get more of that balance into our lives.

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Finding the right balance between being grateful for what you have and still striving for more, is a pursuit we all want to have – but it’s not an easy one to find. I am most certainly not there myself and who knows if I ever will. But I am surely going to try and reach that right balance.

If I think about my starting point then I can appreciate how far I have come already. In my so-called old life, I didn’t feel grateful very often. Don’t get me wrong, I had many reasons to be grateful – that doesn’t mean that you are always grateful for them, right?

The imbalance of my “old life”

I was rather focused on wanting and getting more, always working towards the next goal, accomplishment or result. Never taking the time to be present and look at what I had.

I wasn’t ungrateful either. I knew that I was leading a beautiful life and had more than I needed. It was more about not being able to rest and appreciate what I had. And I was not aware that this is an important part of a happy and fulfilled life.

I thought reaching the next career step would give me a fulfilled life. Or a bigger home would make me happy. But once you reach that goal, you don’t take the time to reflect and be thankful. No, rather on to the next thing because that will probably be the holy grail of happiness and fulfilment. It sounds tedious, doesn’t it – well it is!

What you’re missing out on when you are unbalanced

Maybe all of this rings a bell for you and you are nodding along with me. The problem is that if we focus on one of those things, we are literally out of balance. If we concentrate on mostly wanting more and the best next thing, we will never reach the feelings of fulfilment, abundance or happiness because they never come. Like tomorrow never comes. It’s unreachable because we don’t allow ourselves to reach it.

And when we are too much on the other side and feel grateful for everything we have all day long, we lose the connection to the human drive to grow and expand. If you are 100% grateful for every little piece in your life, there is nothing you would change. There is no need to learn anything new or obtain a new skill. Because we are happy exactly where we are.

And yes, it does sound lovely – but at the same time, it sounds boring as hell. I could not imagine living without any new experience, new information or change in my life. Can you?

Finding the right balance for yourself

I personally think that it’s about finding a balance between these 2 polarities. Making them level with each other as I would imagine on a scale. And that balance or what is the right balance looks unique for everyone. There is no right or wrong way – it needs to work for you.

Always wanting more and driving for more without ever being grateful for what you have, will never make you happy. You just keep going on the vicious circle of want and need.

And being completely grateful for your current life leaves you without any drive to expand your horizon and experience new things.

So the answer for each one of us is somewhere in the middle. For some more on one side than the other – which is fine.

How to bring more gratitude into your life

Let’s talk about what you can do to bring more balance into either of those sides.

Let’s start with the one that I have spent most of my life in – always reaching for the next goal and the next and the next. Obviously, I did not have enough gratefulness in my life.

So what do I do now to have more gratitude in my life? The biggest change and enabler to feel more grateful was for me to be more present.

Being more present increases your gratitude

Practising being more present meant that I could see and be thankful for the little things in life. So that is one thing that you can do. And if you wonder how you can be more present, I have a free mini course for you and a guided meditation – all about being more present. I will provide you with the links.

Another change I made, and it was painful, was to accept more rewards, praise and thankfulness from others. In the past I was perfect at brushing it off, never truly accepting great feedback or praise from someone. I always deflected to move the focus away from me.

Accepting praise increases the feeling of gratitude

But I learned that receiving thankfulness from others is more powerful than being thankful yourself. I go into that topic more in episode 56 “Learn to be more effective in your gratitude practice”, so check that one out if you struggle with accepting thank you from others.

Now and then I will make gratitude a topic in my meditation or journaling. I don’t do it regularly and I am sure it would be good for me to do more. It feels really nice to write down all the things to be grateful for in your life. And in your meditation bring up the feeling of gratitude.

Journaling and meditating on gratefulness

For me feeling gratitude in my heart when I meditate, or even outside of meditation, is one of the strongest emotions. Once I get into it and I get it right, it overflows me and my heart is bursting from all this loving energy.

These are the main tips that I have for you to bring more gratitude onto your scale if you can do with some more in your life.

What if you are already completely grateful?

As for the other side of the scale: What if you are very grateful for your life so much so that you don’t even feel like you want to change one single thing?

To be very honest, I am so far removed from this state of being, that I don’t feel like I can give advice on this. And probably does not need any advice. If you are happy with everything being exactly how it is, then keep doing what you are doing.

Just make sure that you are truly happy with everything being like it is – and not just pretending to out of fear of change, conflict or loss. Deep down you know, if this is what you are doing if you are hiding.

Gratitude Meditation for you

I just released a really fun meditation on gratitude. It’s a bit different than the usual gratefulness meditations where you go through the exercise of being grateful for everything you have. I collected all of these amazing facts of us being human and I share them with you during the meditation for you to feel grateful for being alive, for experiencing this human life. I just find these facts so inspiring!
Go and check it out on my YouTube channel. It’s called the Gratitude Meditation: 11-Minute Meditation AND 14-Minute Meditation

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