How Gratitude Changes Everything

So if you're in a funk, if you're overwhelmed, if you've been in a little bit of a negative energy, if you're sad, if you're frustrated, tap into gratitude. And how do you do that? Good morning, sunshine. Welcome to the Faith and Growth podcast, the space where psychology and spirituality come together to help you rise into the person you were created to be. If you're ready to stop playing small and start living the life God designed for you, I got you. I'm Dr. Betsi Guerra, psychotherapist, speaker and author. And I'm here to help you heal, rise, and walk boldly in your purpose. So if you're ready to do that, let's get started. A couple weekends ago, I was going on a trip and. And I was miserable. On the days leading up to the trip, I had to create a lot of logistics and share with all the family members that were going to help us with the kids competitions and the tournaments and the taking to school and picking up and other good stuff. And I had to leave everything ready at work and send all the emails, schedule all the things and the postings. Like, all the things that needed to be done for work I needed to do in advance. And I'm in the process of remodeling my house. So I also had to make decisions about the remodel and coordinate and pick up and organize so that it would all be ready for the people who were the workers who were coming to complete some things. And I. All I could think about was misery and I was just complaining and in a funk. I felt so sorry for myself. And maybe you're thinking, oh, she was going on a work trip or something like that. I was going on a couple's trip to Key west by boat on a beautiful, sunny Florida Keys weather, gorgeous weekend. That's what I was complaining about. That was my big problem, the big funk that I had so many blessings. I had people who could pick up and take my kids to school. I had people who could take them to tournaments and competitions. I had a job, a business that I get to. In which I get to do what I love while still glorifying God and going with people I love on this trip that I am blessed to have in my life. By boat, Florida Keys. I don't know, like, just. Can you. Do you get it? Do you understand why I was so miserable? Why I had a pity party and wanted to bring out the violin and be like, oh, poor Betsy, she's going on a couples trip and she has all these logistics to Take care of. Well, many times we complain and we feel sorry for ourselves and we feel overwhelmed and depleted and for the blessings that we have. We complain about our kids having too many extracurricular activities because they're healthy, but then, oh, my goodness, we're Uber. And then when we can't be Uber anymore because they went away or they created their own lives, we miss those times. And the reason for that is because we do not practice gratitude enough. The reason all I could think about was what I had to do, rather than why I was doing what I had to do was because I was not being grateful for the fact that I was going on a couple's trip to Key west by boat. And I have people that can help me with the kids, and I have a business that I love and supports me and helps me support other people and fill in the blanks. We don't practice gratitude enough. We don't live in gratitude enough. And gratitude, my friend, is the pathway to joy and fulfillment. And may I also say, it's the path to manifesting your greatest dreams and abundance. It's when you're grateful that you're able to. To receive the most. So gratitude is the way and the shortcut to happiness, fulfillment, and success. We're starting a new month, and November is the month of Thanksgiving. That's my absolute favorite holiday, because it's a time of the year where you get to reflect and become aware of things that maybe you're taking for granted, like all the blessings that God's given you, from the littlest things, like your pillow that you get to put your head on every night and sleep comfortably. To the people and your faith and the blessings, it's just. It's a time to realize, like, oh, my goodness, my body. Like, I'm constantly complaining about how fat I am or how skinny or how white or how whatever, but I have a healthy body. Or maybe you are struggling with an illness and you get to think, like, you know, I'm struggling with this, but I have my two legs to walk to the doctor's office and my two hands to give myself medicine. Or maybe you. Or maybe your hands and your legs are compromised right now because of something you're going through, and you have the people to support you and the wheelchair to take you. And there's just so much we can feel grateful for, and it's usually not until we lose it that we then realize how important it was. So Thanksgiving is an opportunity to pause and reflect on, like, oh, my goodness, I'm alive. I have all these blessings. I have all these people. So I love, love, love, love the vibe of Thanksgiving. But I also love that for me, it's also a time to connect with my family. My entire family is all spread out. I have family in Puerto Rico, I have family in Georgia and I'm in Miami. And I love my siblings. I'm one of four. And I love seeing them. My kids love their cousins and. And it's Christmas. It's Christmas every time I get to see them. Minus the materialistic part of like buying gifts and making it a more commercialized thing than meaning, right? Because I think sometimes, and I'm the first one who fails in that sometimes we lose track of why Christmas is Christmas. In Thanksgiving, there's no, like, there's no pressure for gifts, giving and stuff, like buying stuff. There's just family and gratitude, right? And every Thanksgiving we go to my brothers and we are always together, always together. Every year we know what we're gonna do for Thanksgiving every single year. And it just fills my heart because I don't always know when the next time I'm gonna see my family is, but I know Thanksgiving is going to be the time. And we're super Puerto Rican and Costa Rican, my sister in law and Cuban, my husband. But we go to Thanksgiving to Georgia and we do it the American way. We have bonfires and we do the turkeys. Like we do a fried turkey and my mom does a regular turkey. We do the sweet potato sides and the apple pies with ice cream and the pecan pies and. And then we take apple cider, we go, we cut a tree from a farm and it's super Americanized. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I absolutely love it. All the traditions that we have, being with family and feeling and practicing gratitude. Where do I sign up? So I'm obsessed with Thanksgiving and I just want to share that, that energy with you so that you get excited about Thanksgiving too. And since today, since today you get to start thinking about all the list of things that you've been blessed with that you want to practice gratitude towards. So in this month, I invite you to reflect on those times, those moments that you've had. Like my not best moment last a couple weekends ago where you're dwelling on the little inconveniences and having a pity party over something that you get to feel grateful and blessed for. I don't think I've shared this here, but one of my favorite concepts or skill sets in psychology is reframing, which is when you change the perspective with which you look at something. And. And I remember one of the examples that I usually give my students in the Faith Based Coaching Academy is of reframing is a time that I was. My kids were little and I had. My oldest was in the hospital. She had been hospitalized with pneumonia. And my youngest also had to go to the hospital. I was still breastfeeding her, and she had to go to the hospital. It turns out she had RSB and. And was super sick. And I remember at some point being in the emergency room with the little one while the oldest one was in a hospital room feeling like, super overwhelmed, like, oh, my gosh, this is ridiculous. I can't believe I'm going through this. My two kids are into different places and they're both sick, and I don't know what to do. And then I went outside and I'm like, come on, Betsy, come on. What would you tell your clients? How can you reframe this? Come on, Betsy, you got this. And I am the queen of reframing. I'm always looking at the blessings and the positive side. So I went outside to the waiting room in the hospital and I thought. And I'm like, God, help me see what I get to feel grateful for. And while I was there, I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm in the hospital because my kids are sick, my girls are sick, but they're going to be okay. They're going to be okay because it's just pneumonia, which is under control because it's just rsv and there's medicine for that because I have insurance to pay for the hospital and the doctors to support my daughters. And I had a car that took me to the hospital. If we think of a lot of places in the universe, you know, many people don't have a way to get to a hospital or it's too far, or they don't have a transportation means, or a lot of people are not as blessed as I am to be five minutes away and have a car. And a lot of people don't have insurance or the money to pay the copay of the insurance or the doctors that are amazing to help us take care of our kids. And may I also say that some parents were there at the exact time that I was reflecting, and they don't know if they're going to come out with their children, as was my case years prior to I left the hospital without my daughter. When you enter a hospital, you expect to leave with your child healthy. I knew I was going to leave with my I mean, the odds of me leaving with my children healthy were very high at that moment. So when I thought that, I was like, oh, it's just RSB and pneumonia, and they're going to be okay. Okay. I have insurance. I have money to pay the copay. I had a car to get here. I have a pump where I can pump some milk to send to my daughter, who's going. The little one who's going back home tonight so that I can stay with the oldest one. I have enough milk production that I can send that milk with her. When I started thinking that way, I started feeling so lucky, so grateful that I had two girls in the hospital who were sick because they were sick and the reason. And I felt grateful because I knew they were going to be okay. But I was grateful because they were here. They were here with me. They were alive. And on top of that, I had people that could take care of my oldest, my little one, while I was staying with the oldest. And I had. I just had so much support. And, yeah, it was a crappy time. It sucked. But when you focus on gratitude, everything changes without anything changing in the situation. And that's what reframing is. Reframing is changing the perspective with which you look at something and converting it into a positive one. When I think of losing Fofi, at the time, I was looking at it from the lens of the grieving mom who lost a daughter. And when I chose to reframe that, I felt like, oh, wait, I am the chosen mother of an angel. I am VIP in heaven because my daughter is so cute that when Jesus looks at her and she asks for something, she's like. He's like, you're so cute. Of course I'm going to give you whatever you want. So I think of her as my intercessor in the prison, like my hookup in heaven. And so if you have any requests, you can just come to me and I'll talk to Fofi, and I'll hook you up, too. But when you. When you think that way, you feel like the luckiest woman on earth. I feel like Mary, who was the chosen mother of Jesus. I feel like the chosen mother of Fofi. I must be special. God must have a thing with me. I must be his favorite. And God, you shouldn't play favorites. But he chose me to be the mom of this beautiful angel, this little saint. How lucky am I? How lucky am I that as a result of having grieved my daughter, I know the peace that surpasses all Understanding. And I know a joy that does not depend on external situations. How lucky am I? How grateful am I for all those blessings? When you tap into gratitude, you're able to reframe. When you're stuck in traffic and you're remembering the mother of the person that just cut you off and all that stuff, you can do that, or you could feel grateful for the time, the time of stillness that you have in the car, that you can't go anywhere. And maybe you either spend that time in silence, we spoke about silence last month with God, or you put some music and you worship and you connect with him, or you call your mom or your grandma and see how they're doing. It's a time. Or you listen to this podcast or an audiobook that's going to help you become a better version of yourself. How great is traffic? I love traffic. We get to reframe when we are able to be grateful for what is as is quick interruption. Just to say thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you for watching, thank you for subscribing, following for your comments, for your love, for your support, thank you for being part of my life. Whether I know you personally or not, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for you. And that's all I wanted to say in this interruption. So back to the episode. So gratitude is the pathway to joy. It's the pathway to fulfillment. It's the pathway to success. And when we're grateful, by the way, we vibrate at a very high frequency. Emotions have frequency. They have energy. And when you're, when you're feeling grateful, your energy is very elevated. That frequency is very high. And they say that scientifically speaking, like energy attracts like energy, right? So like emotions, like high frequency emotions, attract high frequency feelings, experiences, and opportunities. And think about it. When you're grateful and happy and joyful and filled with the Holy Spirit, you. You're happy. And it just shows. You glow. And people see it. And when you glow, you're attractive, people want what you have, people want to be close to you. And all this can happen with just shifting to gratitude. So when I was complaining about everything that I had to do to go on this fantastic Key west trip by boat, it's embarrassing to even confess it. When I was complaining about it at some point, I had tried different things. I had tried worship music, which usually helps me shift. I had tried silence, which is a beautiful, powerful practice that really supports me. I had tried being out in the nature, but for some reason it was harder to shake off the funk That I was in because I had been carrying it along. Like I've been doing a lot. I've had a lot of things on my plate for a long time, and I feel a little depleted. We spoke about how adaptation, energy can be depleted. And then, you know, you get to focus on prayer, too, and silence to bring that energy back, like that connection with God. Back when this case, my tools were not being enough. And it wasn't until I was able to practice gratitude and I was able to see the gifts. And I will say I practiced gratitude in stillness. So silence still was included in my journey, like in what helped me shift my energy. Silence and stillness was still present, but in that silence and stillness, I was just being grateful for everything that came to my mind. Thank you, God, for how overwhelmed I feel with having to plan the logistics of the kids, because that means they're alive and that means I have people to delegate that, to thank you, God, for nature, because it allows me to breathe fresh air. And the trees that are releasing the oxygen that I am intaking and the ones that are taking in the carbon dioxide that I'm releasing, like, I was. I started just like, nitpicking on what to be grateful for. And that shifted everything. It shifted everything. So I ask you, what are you going through now? Like, is there something that's hard and that you can't shake off? Is there something you feel frustrated at or, or. Or annoyed by or. Or overwhelmed with? Like, what is it? And find out, like, find, nitpick and find the thing in that, in that situation that you get to be grateful for. What is it, what is it that you're. You're so overwhelmed by and just shift to gratitude. They say gratitude is an attitude, but I think gratitude is an action. Gratitude is a verb. Gratitude is something that you experience, that you live. You can't just feel it. You get to be it, do it, experience it. So I know for me, I'm really good about saying the right things and doing the right things. And I have a lot of. Of control, willpower, and grace to do what's right. But sometimes internally, I don't feel in alignment with what I know to do outwardly. And I'm very intentional about practicing grace, but I think it's so important to align that grace with the experience within. And I'm really good about saying thank you, but I'm not always. Or recognizing rationally that I get to be grateful for these things. But I don't always feel that gratitude. Many times I'm just complaining about all the things that come with the blessings. And there's no better way to push away blessings or to attract more negative energy, more low frequency experiences than by being ungrateful. So of course, during that time, Murphy's Law, you know, like, everything that could go wrong, when it rains, it pours, went wrong. Like everything that could go wrong went wrong because I was being ungrateful. And like energy attracts like energy, so vibrating at a very, like very low frequency of ingratitude. Is that even a word? Lack of gratitude? Ungrateful? When you vibrate at that frequency, then everything else goes wrong too. But it's not by coincidence. It's not because the universe conspires against you. It's not because you're unlucky. It's because you are ungrateful, like me. So I invite me, and I invite you to consider living, being, experiencing gratitude, especially during this month of November, so that when Thanksgiving come, it's already a habit. You already know how to do that. It's who you are. So if you're in a funk, if you're overwhelmed, if you've been in a little bit of a negative energy, if you're sad, if you're frustrated, tap into gratitude. And how do you do that? Maybe you go and you create a list of all the things that are not supporting you right now. Like what's robbing you of your peace, what are you stressed out about? What's bothering you? Just write it all down. And then ask yourself, why am I in this predicament? Why am I struggling with all this schoolwork, for example? Oh, it's because I get to go to school and learn. Why am I struggling with like all this overwhelm, with all the things that I have to do with the kids? Because your kids are alive and they're still home with you. And then you get to, you get to be their Uber and their nurse and their tutor and their doctor and their chef and their cleaning lady and other things. You get to ask any empty nester how they would feel and how much they would love to be in your shoes. If you are struggling with illnesses or financial difficulties, why are you in that predicament? Because you're lucky enough to fill in the blank. So let's focus on reframing those things. And then once you've been able to identify what about the thing that you're going through, you can feel grateful for. Then just practice gratitude. Do a gratitude journal. Do gratitude journaling every, every morning or in your prayer. Do a thanksgiving prayer. Call people and thank them for being their life in your life for, for the things that they do for you. Or just, just, just sit with it, sit with it and like, maybe close your eyes, meditate and like find gratitude in your body. What shape, form, color, like temperature. Like, just connect with that gratitude in your body. Remember that the things that you're grateful for, that what you journal about and all those things, those are in the mind. So thoughts are the language of the mind. So I think I'm grateful for this. Emotions are the language of the body. So when it comes to gratitude, you can't just know that you should be grateful or think that you're grateful. You get to drop into your body and feel gratitude. Where in your body can you feel it? Where is that gratitude? And then just breathe into it. Breathe air, oxygen, energy into it and just connect with it and make it an effort, make it a point, set an intention to connect, feel and be gratitude. And when you do that, send me a message and tell me how your life has changed. Tell me how your mood and your energy has shifted. And then just make it a habit. Make it a habit to be grateful. Every time we are struggling with anything or we feel like we're in a little bit of a dark mood, I promise you, it's because you're not being grateful enough. So I hope this helps you begin the habit of gratitude until you embody it and become it so that you don't even have to think about it. It just comes out. And I promise that will transform your life forever. Because gratitude is the pathway to joy. I love you. Bye. That's it for today's episode. I loved, loved, loved spending this time with you. So thank you for joining me. If somebody came to mind while you were listening, bless them with this episode, send it to them. And if you may, please subscribe and leave a review. Those are really helpful to help us spread the message. And if you want to grow in faith and wisdom, join me@faithandgrowth.com thank you for spending this time with me. Love you. Bye.