How to Be Grateful Even When Our Life is Falling Apart?

Note: This article is by Mark Chernoff, who talks about how to find gratitude in different life situations.

For this, we asked her if she liked her job; however, she surprised us with a wide smile and unparalleled enthusiasm as she replied, "You won't believe how much I love my work, as I manage to make dozens of our guests happy every day, in addition to providing food for my two beautiful children."

30 minutes later, we met a happy family of six in the lobby of the same hotel. They were enjoying their time, and their cheerful presence caught our attention. Later, the father told us that they were staying at that hotel since their house burned to the ground prior to that night. However, they managed to escape it unharmed, which is why they were celebrating.

These two situations have served as two wake-up calls because there is always something in life that we should be grateful to have. In my aforementioned book, I shared the following passage from my grandmother's diary, which she wrote on 9/16/1977. "Today, I'm setting in my hospital bed awaiting a double mastectomy, but I feel strangely fortunate, as I haven't suffered from any health problems my entire life. During my residency at the hospital, I have seen dozens of cancer patients who were barely 17 years old being pushed on their wheelchairs."

Her words have hung in our home office for the past two decades as a constant reminder to me and Angel to be grateful for what we have through thick and thin. We do our best to be grateful on a daily basis, no matter the blessings we get or the problems we face because there are other people in other parts of the world who are fighting for their lives.

I want you to think about your life because if you're like other people, you probably won't give up what you think your life is supposed to look like. Also, sincerely value your life as it is instead because it is much easier to talk about finding true, sincere gratitude than to practice it in the hustle and bustle of life today, especially during difficult times.

Although my wife and I grew up under really difficult circumstances and succeeded in overcoming them - which I will talk about at the end of this article - we must be honest and admit that we make up the tragedy in our lives from minor and unimportant incidents and problems most of the time. We get scared and lose our minds and allow stress to get the better of us when something in our life doesn’t go exactly as planned, instead of learning from our experiences. We take our small accomplishments for granted because we want to achieve our major goals overnight.

Today, I am going to challenge you to start making different choices, and not to allow things beyond your control to control you. As the behavior and choices we take determine the course of any of our normal days, we either lead ourselves toward peace or psychological tension. It is all about how you view a situation and the way you decide to act in it and always remembering that there is no absolute certainty in life, and that we do not know exactly what the future holds for us.

Therefore, the best strategy for living a happy life is to take advantage of the present moment in the best and most positive way, even if this moment is far from being ideal and perfect. Moreover, you should apply this strategy, especially in far-from-ideal moments.

Your life, with all its unexpected twists and turns, has brought you to this present moment, and it has taken every painful situation, every complex, confusing, and ambiguous situation you have been through in your life to bring you to your current place. If you dare to admit that you are a little afraid, the ability to smile even when you cry, the audacity to ask for help when you need it, and the wisdom to accept help when it is offered, then you have everything you need. You only have to believe in it to be able to move to the next step.

For this, we're going to take a quick look at some ways to help be grateful even in times of uncertainty. We often think of difficult times like this as something we don’t like, such as dealing with a difficult situation, a stubborn person, experiencing a severe life change, or the loss of a loved one, and similar stressful situations. I am not implying here that we should rejoice and express our happiness in living despite the painful and frustrating experiences of life, but there are ways in which we can find sincere gratitude as we grow and age through these experiences.

Some powerful examples of how to apply this

1. How to be grateful when living with mean and stubborn people?

We usually expect people to behave in a certain way, and we specifically expect them to always treat us with kindness, fairness, integrity, and respect, but some people's actions will not match our expectations. They get agitated and lose their temper, or act foolishly, no matter how we treat them, which you have to accept.

I am not telling you that you should lower your standards in your social interactions. Rather, you have to remind yourself that getting rid of your expectations of others is the best way to avoid feeling disappointed, sad, and frustrated because of them, especially for stubborn people. You will end up sad and frustrated if you expect that others will always give you the same as you give them; not everyone has a substance, heart, and intentions similar to yours, and in addition to that, sincere gratitude doesn't fill the hearts of everyone. When you have to deal with a difficult person, you can be grateful that there are other people in your life who are much less difficult and stubborn than they are. Additionally, you can be grateful for making it a way for you to practice and develop your skills in patience and communication and lower your expectations of others. You can also make this person a mentor who unintentionally helps you become a stronger person, and you can, at the very least, be grateful to this person for being a great reminder not to become like them one day.

2. How to be grateful instead of being grumpy?

Most of us have developed a subtle habit of whining and complaining about our lives, and we may not even notice how often we do it. However, we immediately feel resentment and bitterness every time we experience some tension in our lives because things are not going quite as we would like them to. Feeling resentful is a form of complaining, and it's one of the common ways that lead us to waste our lives.

Gratitude is an antidote that treats and nullifies the effect of the above. Every time you notice that you are feeling resentful or complaining about something, you need to pay attention to the presence of something in your mind that drives you to feel those feelings that limit you. Also, you will also notice that you are the one who allows that story to control you and dominate your life. For this, you have to find a way that helps you feel grateful instead of dealing with these feelings. To achieve this, you can ask yourself the following two questions:

• What would you be grateful for right now, if you really want to?
• What do you value the most at the moment?

I seriously advise you to think of only one good reason to be positive when life gives you all the reasons and pains to be a negative and pessimistic person. Remember, there is always something to be grateful for.

3. How to be grateful when feeling overwhelmed and confused?

Sometimes, the people and places we have known and depended on and the situations and commitments we deal with on a daily basis exhaust us, especially when we underestimate and take them for granted.

Then when that relationship becomes unnecessary and more dispensable in your subconscious mind, it overwhelms you in your busy days. Additionally, you feel that these wonderful things are getting in your way and hindering your development. This isn’t true since you are the only one who is hindering your own development. We often underestimate the most grateful things in our lives. So, challenge yourself to flip and change your perspective in your moments of confusion and defeat using a simple reconsideration method called, "I love it." This is a phrase that can be used at the end of any confusing idea, and here are a few examples of its use to help you with that as well:

• I have to go shopping, pay the bills, and pick up my kids from school in an hour, and I really love doing that.
• My inbox is full of emails from clients that I have to answer today, which I really love to do.

Therefore, let the previous method give you the perspective you desire because the daily things that confuse us are often hidden blessings. Now we'll touch on some of the more difficult things.

4. How to be grateful when losing your job?

Winning in chess is not just about moving forward; Rather, you have to step back sometimes in order to put yourself in a position where you can have an advantage. This analogy can be applied to your practical life as well. Despite the severity of the pain you may feel after losing your job, it is an end that leads to the beginning of all things that will happen in your life after that. You can capitalize on that loss by allowing yourself to replace the burden and heaviness of success you used to feel with the lightness and radiance of a beginner again.

Think of it as a different start, an opportunity to freshen up your life and reinvent the person you are. You should also see the beauty in this opportunity, feel yourself breaking your fixed routine, and consider it as a solid foundation on which you can rebuild certain aspects of your life the way you have always wanted it to be.

So, remind yourself as often as necessary that you can be grateful for the transformative moments in your life, and for your ability to push yourself into the restless state of striving for job interviews, learn new skills or move to a higher level. You can also be grateful for the opportunity that allowed you to become a stronger person, even in the midst of the developmental pains that eventually led you to that point.

5. How to be grateful in the midst of illnesses and health issues?

We all hate the pain caused by health problems, and we often find it difficult to be grateful in such situations. We always overlook an important thing, which is that only the living can feel such things, as they still have the chance to live and enjoy their lives.

Two years ago, on the penultimate day of her life, my best friend told me that the only thing she regretted was that she didn't value each year of her life with the same passion and sense of purpose that she had in the last two years of her life after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her last words were, "I've had so much lately, and I genuinely value every step I've taken, and I wish I'd known about my illness. Then I would have started earlier."

Those words made me cry and smile at the same time, and seeing the sincere and genuine gratitude in her eyes at that moment was truly amazing and miraculous. She was truly grateful for her incredible ability to achieve everything she had accomplished in her last two years, and that feeling has always stayed with me.

Although I look at health problems as afflictions, and can in most cases be painful and debilitating to the body, their pain can be alleviated by feeling grateful that we are still alive, and for all the opportunities that we still have.

6. How to be grateful when losing a loved one?

Death is one of the most difficult absolute facts that we have to bear and adapt to because the person who used to give meaning to our lives is no longer in it - at least they are no longer with us physically- As we're not the same after losing them. As we must adapt to the new situation, someone may turn after the loss of someone dear to him into a father without his daughter, a close friend who sits alone, a widow instead of a wife, or a neighbor next to a new person. After experiencing this, we tend to wish we could go back in time to re-live those memories.

However, we can still be grateful for the gift of their presence in our lives, and my wife and I have suffered the loss of siblings and close friends, either due to illness or suicide. Therefore, we know, based on our experience, that when a loved one passes away, they leave a wound in our hearts.

Anyway, we have gradually learned that we can look at the aforementioned as good news. Although death may be perceived as an end, it is an essential part of our lives. For without death, we can't validate and appreciate the beauty of things.

Boundaries give beauty, and death is the ultimate and last limit that reminds us that we must be aware of the presence of beautiful and special people in our lives and appreciate the wonderful life that we have. On the other hand, death can also be perceived as a new beginning because, despite the loss of someone dear to us, this end is a turning point in our lives.

Despite our grief, the passing of our loved ones forces us to gradually change and reinvent our lives because in this transformation lies an opportunity to experience and test beauty in new ways and places that we have not seen before. Finally, death is an opportunity to honor human life and to be grateful for all the beautiful moments and situations we lived with our departed loved ones.

In conclusion

It isn't easy to feel grateful for all the disappointments and difficulties we encounter in our lives, but it can become a wonderful avenue for development and prosperity if we can find lessons in it.

The best time to focus on finding and actually feeling gratitude is when you don't feel like it because it's the time when feeling grateful can make the most life-changing impact.