What a wonderful post. I come from a Christian angle and I'm old-fashioned in that in prayer, I say thank you for the good stuff, and I ask for strength to endure the bad. I'm not the modern sort who prays for money and prizes (the televangelists who take that approach make ne very uncomfortable). Your approach of saying thank you is very similar to my mindset. And I think you're right, it does work. It helps you to see the good, to focus on the positives, especially at times when it's so very hard to. It's meditative in its way, I think.
Thank you, Helen. Yes, it is definitely meditative. It’s so easy (and human) to focus on the things we’re unhappy about, but focusing on the good brings relief, even in difficult times.
Lovely, Ros. I really needed to hear the “you get what you push against” message right now. My husband and I have been housesitting, travelling and doing work for accommodation exchanges for 10 years and now we are constantly talking about not having a home and what are we going to do to get one. We need to stop! I’m going to do a gratitude practice for all that the last 10 years of freedom from bills, seeing many amazing places around the world and meeting loads of great people and critters have given me.
Good call, Amanda. I believe we just get the message we need when the time is right… which was why I wondered why I didn’t hear it before!
I may well be getting on the road next year myself.
If you can relax into where you are with gratitude, the relief might be enough to let in what you asked for. My experience is, it isn’t a problem you need to actively solve, if you desire it but can relax with What Is.
Thank you, Ros - I was lucky to be in long-term therapy while I was writing the part of my memoir about my abusive ex, but I didn't lean into it, instead I ignored it in those sessions. I thought the actual writing would be therapy enough for it. I really love your prompt to practice a type of thanksgiving - I had to go back and re-write that section to write the good in him in there, as it was pure rage, and that was hardest of all. But I will try this too. Sending you love and thank you for sharing this.
How interesting that you chose not to bring it up in therapy. There can be a lot of shame around being abused, and I wonder if (even if you were writing about it, which is shame-releasing) you were avoiding the shame that arises when we speak one to one. Writing has its own barrier, after all. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, but I was so grateful to learn other practices that showed me that writing wasn't quite enough for fully processing the pain of the past. Tapping and gratitude practices have been powerful. Sending you love right back, and thank you.
Thank you ❤️ What’s weird is that I hadn’t noticed until my therapist mentioned it. Then when I shared some of it, he tried to encourage me not to just lean on the writing. I spent the first year talking to him about my bin wars with the neighbours! 😂 Gratitude definitely helps - helped hugely when I got sober too. X
Each night, pre-sleep, I like to reflect on three things I felt grateful for that day. Last night:-
(upon learning a good friend had lost his battle against cancer) - Grateful for our wonderful lunches where we changed the world, then changed it back again...
(the two blue eggs in our garden have hatched) - Grateful for natural, new life tweets outside our bedroom window, each morning
(puzzling out a new corporate positioning with a client) - Grateful for a mind still sharp after almost 78 years.
This is a beautifully detailed list. I do a small 3 things gratitude practice daily in my 5-minute journal app but looking at your examples I see how much I cheat myself by giving short answers I haven’t put a lot of effort into, like “tea”. I mean of course I grateful for tea, but without the specificity like your beautiful list, there is no emotional impact and so the practice is lip service only. Thank you for the nudge to make it count. Sorry to hear about your friend, but what a lovely response to that loss.
Just seeing this post, but I think it helps to simply get up “deciding” you're going to have a good day and thinking of all you're grateful for. Especially if you live with pain, otherwise, you will be a negative force to yourself and maybe even others around you. 🙏😘
That's a powerful decision, Kim. A very hard one, too, when you're living with pain... until you realise that the opposite doesn't help you (and might even make things worse). I've been starting each day with a gratitude practice for a few years (writing 3 things I'm grateful for in the morning) but I've realised I've got a bit lazy about it and not really generated the *feeling* of gratitude, which is the main thing that gives it fuel. So I'm gratitude-tapping instead now. This cuts through my barriers, my automation. Thank you so much for this comment that may help others, too.
You're welcome! I also recently started (way too late, I know) saying a prayer before or after my morning Bible study to pray a thanks to God for letting me see another day!
- okay. just a quick dip since I'm here procrastinating in the face of a deadline.
I'm not going to share my personal gratitude notes, but will share one here especially for you:
I thank you, Ros Barber, for
1) your books, which hit deeply resonant chords in me and led me to
2) your website, which led me to
3) simpleology, which got me better organized and gave me a place and system to prioritize when I most needed it (seems so long ago - like an echo of another life sionce I have my own system now) and also
4) got me on your mailing list which led to
5) my own personal Ros Barber gilded bookmark as a prize from your Shakespeare haiku challenge during the pandemic! And finally, for
6) my being here for the evolution of your substack, which is one of the things that drew me more deeply into the Substack world (where I will soon be launching my own reflections on the intersecton of environment, spirituality, and lessons from the mythic world - In Defense of Apophenia).
Kathi. My goodness. What a beautiful message. I couldn't respond when it first landed, but I am wowed by the amount of time you are recounting there. Simplelogy! That feels like a lifetime ago for me, too! I use a combination of 'Todoist' and 'Intend.do' these days. And you were the winner of a golden bookmark! I remember that Shakespeare haiku challenge. I'm excited to hear you are now joining the Substack community as a writer.
Isn't it fascinating how we have no idea, really, what impact we can have on someone's life just by writing some words? The books that begin the relationship with a reader, or the Substack posts seed something very real and potentially life-shaping.
I hope one day someone writes a gratitude list to you as beautiful as you have written to me here.
Oh my gosh, Ros, this was just beautiful. All of it. But what I will take with me into my day is that focus on a want is a focus on a lack. This is something I've been working on myself this year, only I haven't been able to frame it so succinctly. Thank you 🙏
Thank you, Lisa. Yes, the association between want and lack was important for me to understand, too. One can appreciate it when you think of things like the old campaign "War on Want" which is clearly never going to succeed!
I loved this. In recovery lingo, "acceptance is the key to all my problems." I know that, but seeing in print "You get what you push against, whether you want it or not," another aspect of the same mantra. I needed that fleshed out. I got what I needed that I didn't know I needed before I started to read. And I got to smile for you, that you did not find yourself in the middle of a second divorce.
I didn't know that, Jodi, but it makes total sense that this sentence would be part of recovery lingo. In EFT, too, the balancing part of the set-up statement for every round of tapping is "I deeply and completely love and accept myself." Many people, starting out with EFT, can't say it at all, and it has to be softened, but acceptance is key. I love that you got what you needed from this.
Thank you Ros this is a truly beautiful piece of writing that is going to help me in grieving my complicated and very often painful relationship with my Mum who passed away two weeks ago. It will be the mixed bag, however there are some things I am grateful to my Mum for and in the depth of what has been emotional whiplash these past two weeks, this exercise I am sure, will help me achieve some peace at least. Have a beautiful Sunday. 💗
I'm so glad, Diane, that this piece has landed in your awareness when you most need it. I'm sorry for the loss of your mum. I too had a complicated relationship with my mum, but there was so much to thank her for, and I thank her still, though she left this world twenty years ago. Such a raw time, when you lose your mum. Take your time. Sending you love. x
What a beautiful piece. The gratitude you felt, and your openness to seeing the future of your relationship, seemed to melt the wall that had come between you and your husband. I’m struck by your vulnerability. Thank you.
Thank you, Serena. I was so grateful to have the tools to melt that wall. Even though it didn't seem possible, and I have given up hoping for it, at the moment I gave up, it happened: and that is the great power of surrender.
As to vulnerability, I spent years very armoured because I was afraid of being attacked, and I got attacked anyway. I realised from listening to Brene Brown that vulnerability has its own kind of strength, and offers a route to connection with other people that you will never achieve from inside your armour. So here I am.
That is a powerful journey. Like you, I have some armour of my own. Vulnerability and surrender are not things that come easily to me and, I suspect, not for you either. But allowing yourself to be vulnerable and surrendering opened the door for you and your husband to move forward. Such an inspiring story!
Ros, this is so beautifully poignant and powerful. What a light that has and is emerging from the shadows you’ve faced and walked through internally and externally. And what hope you’ve held up like a torch with your experience. Your process feels familiar, very much like something I’ve done recently on my journey through the 12 steps in relation to my partner’s alcoholism. I engaged in a similar process of writing letters to others and to myself where I thanked people I felt I’d harmed or been harmed by, for the gifts they gave me that helped bring me to where I am, who I am. It was a kind of alchemical process that truly turned a part of me that felt leaden and heavy and forced into a golden release, a freeing of and letting go of pain and a walk into light. I recognized that journey in your words and your experience and felt a kind of companionship there for which I am deeply grateful.
That’s a beautiful description of how the heaviness is transmuted into light, Dan. Thank you for that, and for the recognition of companionship. We are many of us on similar journeys even if, on the outside, they look different. Suffering of any kind is so transformative when we take the steps to move through it. I see your hand, and I take it, in kinship.
What a wonderful post. I come from a Christian angle and I'm old-fashioned in that in prayer, I say thank you for the good stuff, and I ask for strength to endure the bad. I'm not the modern sort who prays for money and prizes (the televangelists who take that approach make ne very uncomfortable). Your approach of saying thank you is very similar to my mindset. And I think you're right, it does work. It helps you to see the good, to focus on the positives, especially at times when it's so very hard to. It's meditative in its way, I think.
Thank you, Helen. Yes, it is definitely meditative. It’s so easy (and human) to focus on the things we’re unhappy about, but focusing on the good brings relief, even in difficult times.
It definitely does. It's so easy to fix on the bad and end up spiralling ever deeper. And that's no good!
I could say so much. You touched me and showed me a better way to deal with my old pain. Thank you so much❣️
Thank you, Martha, and bless you for your support this week. Let me know how that old pain feels after thanking the good parts of it.
Lovely, Ros. I really needed to hear the “you get what you push against” message right now. My husband and I have been housesitting, travelling and doing work for accommodation exchanges for 10 years and now we are constantly talking about not having a home and what are we going to do to get one. We need to stop! I’m going to do a gratitude practice for all that the last 10 years of freedom from bills, seeing many amazing places around the world and meeting loads of great people and critters have given me.
Good call, Amanda. I believe we just get the message we need when the time is right… which was why I wondered why I didn’t hear it before!
I may well be getting on the road next year myself.
If you can relax into where you are with gratitude, the relief might be enough to let in what you asked for. My experience is, it isn’t a problem you need to actively solve, if you desire it but can relax with What Is.
Thank you, Ros - I was lucky to be in long-term therapy while I was writing the part of my memoir about my abusive ex, but I didn't lean into it, instead I ignored it in those sessions. I thought the actual writing would be therapy enough for it. I really love your prompt to practice a type of thanksgiving - I had to go back and re-write that section to write the good in him in there, as it was pure rage, and that was hardest of all. But I will try this too. Sending you love and thank you for sharing this.
How interesting that you chose not to bring it up in therapy. There can be a lot of shame around being abused, and I wonder if (even if you were writing about it, which is shame-releasing) you were avoiding the shame that arises when we speak one to one. Writing has its own barrier, after all. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, but I was so grateful to learn other practices that showed me that writing wasn't quite enough for fully processing the pain of the past. Tapping and gratitude practices have been powerful. Sending you love right back, and thank you.
Thank you ❤️ What’s weird is that I hadn’t noticed until my therapist mentioned it. Then when I shared some of it, he tried to encourage me not to just lean on the writing. I spent the first year talking to him about my bin wars with the neighbours! 😂 Gratitude definitely helps - helped hugely when I got sober too. X
Each night, pre-sleep, I like to reflect on three things I felt grateful for that day. Last night:-
(upon learning a good friend had lost his battle against cancer) - Grateful for our wonderful lunches where we changed the world, then changed it back again...
(the two blue eggs in our garden have hatched) - Grateful for natural, new life tweets outside our bedroom window, each morning
(puzzling out a new corporate positioning with a client) - Grateful for a mind still sharp after almost 78 years.
I slept well and woke with a new haiku.
This is a beautifully detailed list. I do a small 3 things gratitude practice daily in my 5-minute journal app but looking at your examples I see how much I cheat myself by giving short answers I haven’t put a lot of effort into, like “tea”. I mean of course I grateful for tea, but without the specificity like your beautiful list, there is no emotional impact and so the practice is lip service only. Thank you for the nudge to make it count. Sorry to hear about your friend, but what a lovely response to that loss.
Thank you Ros. I appreciate you and this piece has made a difference to my day and perhaps my life.
Then it has been extremely worthwhile. Thanks, Kate.
This is beautiful and helpful and I appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you, Lori.
Just seeing this post, but I think it helps to simply get up “deciding” you're going to have a good day and thinking of all you're grateful for. Especially if you live with pain, otherwise, you will be a negative force to yourself and maybe even others around you. 🙏😘
That's a powerful decision, Kim. A very hard one, too, when you're living with pain... until you realise that the opposite doesn't help you (and might even make things worse). I've been starting each day with a gratitude practice for a few years (writing 3 things I'm grateful for in the morning) but I've realised I've got a bit lazy about it and not really generated the *feeling* of gratitude, which is the main thing that gives it fuel. So I'm gratitude-tapping instead now. This cuts through my barriers, my automation. Thank you so much for this comment that may help others, too.
You're welcome! I also recently started (way too late, I know) saying a prayer before or after my morning Bible study to pray a thanks to God for letting me see another day!
- okay. just a quick dip since I'm here procrastinating in the face of a deadline.
I'm not going to share my personal gratitude notes, but will share one here especially for you:
I thank you, Ros Barber, for
1) your books, which hit deeply resonant chords in me and led me to
2) your website, which led me to
3) simpleology, which got me better organized and gave me a place and system to prioritize when I most needed it (seems so long ago - like an echo of another life sionce I have my own system now) and also
4) got me on your mailing list which led to
5) my own personal Ros Barber gilded bookmark as a prize from your Shakespeare haiku challenge during the pandemic! And finally, for
6) my being here for the evolution of your substack, which is one of the things that drew me more deeply into the Substack world (where I will soon be launching my own reflections on the intersecton of environment, spirituality, and lessons from the mythic world - In Defense of Apophenia).
Much gratitude for the space you hold,
may you keep on keeping on!
Kathi
Kathi. My goodness. What a beautiful message. I couldn't respond when it first landed, but I am wowed by the amount of time you are recounting there. Simplelogy! That feels like a lifetime ago for me, too! I use a combination of 'Todoist' and 'Intend.do' these days. And you were the winner of a golden bookmark! I remember that Shakespeare haiku challenge. I'm excited to hear you are now joining the Substack community as a writer.
Isn't it fascinating how we have no idea, really, what impact we can have on someone's life just by writing some words? The books that begin the relationship with a reader, or the Substack posts seed something very real and potentially life-shaping.
I hope one day someone writes a gratitude list to you as beautiful as you have written to me here.
Oh my gosh, Ros, this was just beautiful. All of it. But what I will take with me into my day is that focus on a want is a focus on a lack. This is something I've been working on myself this year, only I haven't been able to frame it so succinctly. Thank you 🙏
Thank you, Lisa. Yes, the association between want and lack was important for me to understand, too. One can appreciate it when you think of things like the old campaign "War on Want" which is clearly never going to succeed!
I loved this. In recovery lingo, "acceptance is the key to all my problems." I know that, but seeing in print "You get what you push against, whether you want it or not," another aspect of the same mantra. I needed that fleshed out. I got what I needed that I didn't know I needed before I started to read. And I got to smile for you, that you did not find yourself in the middle of a second divorce.
I didn't know that, Jodi, but it makes total sense that this sentence would be part of recovery lingo. In EFT, too, the balancing part of the set-up statement for every round of tapping is "I deeply and completely love and accept myself." Many people, starting out with EFT, can't say it at all, and it has to be softened, but acceptance is key. I love that you got what you needed from this.
Thank you Ros this is a truly beautiful piece of writing that is going to help me in grieving my complicated and very often painful relationship with my Mum who passed away two weeks ago. It will be the mixed bag, however there are some things I am grateful to my Mum for and in the depth of what has been emotional whiplash these past two weeks, this exercise I am sure, will help me achieve some peace at least. Have a beautiful Sunday. 💗
I'm so glad, Diane, that this piece has landed in your awareness when you most need it. I'm sorry for the loss of your mum. I too had a complicated relationship with my mum, but there was so much to thank her for, and I thank her still, though she left this world twenty years ago. Such a raw time, when you lose your mum. Take your time. Sending you love. x
Wonderful piece Ros. On every level.
Thank you, Sharon.
What a beautiful piece. The gratitude you felt, and your openness to seeing the future of your relationship, seemed to melt the wall that had come between you and your husband. I’m struck by your vulnerability. Thank you.
Thank you, Serena. I was so grateful to have the tools to melt that wall. Even though it didn't seem possible, and I have given up hoping for it, at the moment I gave up, it happened: and that is the great power of surrender.
As to vulnerability, I spent years very armoured because I was afraid of being attacked, and I got attacked anyway. I realised from listening to Brene Brown that vulnerability has its own kind of strength, and offers a route to connection with other people that you will never achieve from inside your armour. So here I am.
That is a powerful journey. Like you, I have some armour of my own. Vulnerability and surrender are not things that come easily to me and, I suspect, not for you either. But allowing yourself to be vulnerable and surrendering opened the door for you and your husband to move forward. Such an inspiring story!
Thank you for writing this beautiful piece. Thank you for sharing vulnerably and encouraging in a way that is both accessible and kind.
Thank you, Heidi. I'm so glad it resonated with you.
Ros, this is so beautifully poignant and powerful. What a light that has and is emerging from the shadows you’ve faced and walked through internally and externally. And what hope you’ve held up like a torch with your experience. Your process feels familiar, very much like something I’ve done recently on my journey through the 12 steps in relation to my partner’s alcoholism. I engaged in a similar process of writing letters to others and to myself where I thanked people I felt I’d harmed or been harmed by, for the gifts they gave me that helped bring me to where I am, who I am. It was a kind of alchemical process that truly turned a part of me that felt leaden and heavy and forced into a golden release, a freeing of and letting go of pain and a walk into light. I recognized that journey in your words and your experience and felt a kind of companionship there for which I am deeply grateful.
That’s a beautiful description of how the heaviness is transmuted into light, Dan. Thank you for that, and for the recognition of companionship. We are many of us on similar journeys even if, on the outside, they look different. Suffering of any kind is so transformative when we take the steps to move through it. I see your hand, and I take it, in kinship.