Gratitude & Validation

Nov 18

In the spirit of the season of gratitude, I thought this topic would be pertinent.

In the clinic last week, this concept came up from 80% of my patients and I found myself questioning the Universe as it was clearly trying to get my attention.

Here’s the scenario:

A patient “complains” that life right now is hard. BUT it’s so much harder for an incomprehensible amount of people, I shouldn’t complain…I need to stop complaining about this.

I found myself repeating to almost all of my patients, that yes, it’s important to be grateful for what you have (I mean, we live in the US and have very basic comforts at the very least) AND it’s okay, no imperative to feel your feelings. Your feelings/complaints/experiences are valid and very real to you. It’s bad enough that we have a culture of gaslighting in medicine, relationships, and work. How is it helpful if we gaslight ourselves?

After having this conversation for three straight days, I finally asked myself what I needed to learn from the advice I was giving. It turns out, I was doing my daily gratitude, but I wasn’t feeling the gratitude. I quickly flipped that and started taking a few more seconds to actually FEEL grateful for the things I have. If I said I was grateful for something, but couldn’t feel grateful for it, I came up with something extra for which I could truly feel grateful.

Our words (and thoughts, which turn into words) are more powerful than we think. Look at the bold words in the statements above. How would your life change if you started replacing “but” with “and”? The word “but” negates the first part of a sentence, where “and” is inclusive.

Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Coffee guy challenged his team to remove “weasel words” from their vocabulary. I’ve made a commitment to eliminate weasel words and I encourage you to join me.

Weasel words: