Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash
Recently, the euthanasia of our friend’s beloved dog tipped me into the heavy feeling I recognise as grief.
I also knew this grief was not only about the dog.
It was about everything else we are all experiencing.
In that moment I had forgotten what I could, instead, be grateful for:
- The dog is at peace and in no pain.
- I’m healthy.
- My family’s healthy.
- I can pivot to delivering my service online.
- I can remain socially connected via live technology.
- I’m with my partner and youngest daughter and can easily contact my other children, their children and my brother.
- I can still leave the property and exercise and shop (carefully).
- I can help others adjust to their new working conditions, especially leading staff who are now remote.
- I’m competent with the technology I have, to stay connected and serve online.
- I live in Western Australia.
- Our governments have stepped up to help in ways I never expected.
- Our health and related services are heroic and committed to saving as many lives as possible at great risk to themselves.
- I’m seeing more purposeful collaboration than partisan criticism.
- I’m experiencing the quietness of nature, save for the birds of our neighbourhood.
- The air’s clearer, there’s noticeably less traffic.
- Despite the habitual media focus on the negative, I see us all attempting to lift each other with our versions of humour, inspiration, hope and help.
- We now have time to reflect, reset, recover, renew.
I’m hoping we may finally learn the following from this global experience:
- Money is NOT more important than life and our planet.
- We are fantastic when we help each other.
- “Enough” is all we ever need.
- Commerce practiced with equity between people planet and profit works wonders
- Real truths must be faced, not spun into less or lies.
How we behave now will determine our future, personally and collectively.
Now I feel better, having changed the chemicals of my body from grief to gratefulness in a truly short time!
I will continue to think that way, speak that way and take action that way.
And you can too.
Alternatively, you can take this free 10-minute course and rapidly become grateful.
Stay well, feel grateful.