What You Can Learn From My Dream About Gratitude
Have you ever had one of those dreams that feel so real that when you wake up you have to check to ensure that it was only a dream? Maybe it was a dream of over-sleeping so when you wake up you immediately check your phone to help your heart rate return to normal. It could be the loss of your spouse until you roll over in bed to see them there with you. No matter what it is, we’ve all been there before.
Well, this happened to me recently when after going back to sleep at 4:00a when we wake up to feed our cats (yes, really, and that’s a different story for another day) I had a dream that ended with Sasha waking me up, as she previously would, to take her for her morning jaunt around the neighborhood. I even still have my alarm set for 7:00a with three puppy emojis on my phone. When I woke up she, obviously, wasn’t at my bedside.
After taking a brief moment to be sad, I was filled with gratitude. She had brought me 15 years of pure joy that I was still thinking of her so much that in my dreams I believed she was still by my side.
When people think about gratitude they often think about “taking the time to smell the roses” but it goes so far beyond that. Yes, it does involve being appreciative for what’s around you, including those that are in your life, however, when it’s cultivated and watered, it turns into a habit that helps when you experience something negative in your life. This is what happened when I woke up from my dream.
When our lives permanently changed, I didn’t blame myself or ask “why me,” during the recovery process. I focused on expressing gratitude. I showed appreciation and gratitude to my community. My wife and her mom did everything for me on the home front. I didn’t do anything. I was appreciative that the injuries happened to me and not someone else who may not have been able to deal with it in the same fashion. I’ll never relent on that perspective.
I consider gratitude to be a core value of becoming Built Unstoppable. When you experience a negative experience, whatever that may be and no matter the level of seriousness, your goal is to explore and learn how to express gratitude for it.
Gratitude will help you to handle these experiences and feelings. They will help you to reframe them hence working through them faster. Additionally, gratitude helps us not to take anything for granted because we understand how quickly it can all be taken away from us.
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