Perspective-based Gratitude

Have you ever woke up from a terrible nightmare only to find relief and a new sense of contentment for the day?

The Problem

The mind tends to normalize and take for granted whatever environment it’s in, even if it’s paradise. This can be detrimental to your mental well-being and may contribute to why people who seemingly have everything don’t frequently appear to be any more content or happier; perhaps even less so.

Solution Theory: Observe moments of hardship and tragedy and foster an emotional connection while simultaneously reflecting on things you’re grateful and that you aren’t in that predicament.

By viewing hardship, you begin to distinguish the things you’ve come to take for granted. Essentially a re-calibration.

TL;DR

• Turning tragedy, grief, pain of others into action and gratitude.

• To provoke an emotional response and invoke empathy.

• To imbue a degree of stoicism.

Background

I always hated that feeling that the mind naturally wants to take for granted the good things to the point where paradise itself would become numbing… How it always wants to center on the negativity, no matter how increasingly trivial. This can of course impact state of mind greatly. Travel and volunteering are two ways to help buck this stagnation, but I’m trying something different here. The idea manifested most strongly after watching the film, “Jo Jo Rabbit” actually. Completely satirical and outright funny at times, it left you with a sense of shock at what these children and others like them had to go through during WWII. It inspired and motivated me to do better on their behalf… To Live For Them and not waste what they couldn’t have. Sure it was fictional but it was beautifully story-crafted to symbolize what so many real people went through.

It’s thought that our unique “simulator” within our prefrontal cortex that is unique to humans was thought to be used to “predict” both positive and negative consequences and help calculate risk-assessment. Such instances where you make connections with the struggles of others may activate this region and help allow you appreciate the little things once again.

I’ll be honest, I can’t find much information on this topic and so if people have more insight and this is explored under certain nomenclature, please let me know!

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