The commonality between gratitude and broken ribs
A few weeks back I slipped, fell and unfortunately broke a couple ribs. The doctor says, “There’s not much we can do. Take an over-the-counter pain medication and gradually reduce your dosage as you heal. Be careful and every hour make sure you’re taking deep breaths—it’s going to hurt but we need to keep pneumonia out of your lungs.”
While still not 100%, I’m much better now. In the early days, it was excruciating to cough or laugh. Any sudden jolt would take you from 0/10 to 10/10 on the pain scale.
Initially, all I could think about was sneezing and was hoping I would not sneeze for weeks.
My first sneeze came on day 7. It sent me into a tail spin. I was off pain killers during the day but this sneeze forced me to lie down for about 2 hours before feeling back to normal. It felt like a 1 week set back in my recovery.
Sneeze two comes on day 11. The pain was brutal but guess what ? I felt back to normal in 30 seconds. Half a minute—that’s it !
It’s healing !!
Here’s the thing—I was healing and based on that second sneeze, I realized I was completely unaware of how fast I was actually healing.
The applies to many things in life and especially to the impact of starting or building a gratitude practice.
So for you—if it feels like your gratitude practice is not having the impact you are hoping or growing at the rate you would like, then zero in on how you are responding to the challenges (aka sneezes) in your life.
I believe gratitude is the single best strategy to better deal with challenges and if you pay close attention to how you’ve been impacted by the challenges you’ve encountered over the last 6 months and going forward, you’ll get a sense of how your gratitude practice is growing (aka healing).
