Thoughts For Blooming – Blooming Resilient

How to Reframe Your Thoughts with Gratitude

What We Think Matters

The quality and content of our thoughts impacts us on many levels. The way we think has an impact on our mental, emotional, and physical health. It can be easy to develop habits of negative thinking and self-talk. Like any habit we can change how we think and develop new thought patterns. Take a minute to reflect on these questions:

Do your thought patterns tend to be more positive or negative?
When thinking negatively how does it impact your day? How does it impact your actions and reactions?
Think of three things you are grateful for. How does it make you feel to practice gratitude? How does it change your perspective in this moment?

Positive thoughts and thoughts of gratitude can have many benefits to us. According the the Mayo Clinic these are just some of the benefits positive thoughts can have (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2022):

Longer life span
Lower rates of depression
Decreased stress, distress, and pain
Better overall well-being and quality of life
Better coping skills and increased resilience

Paying Attention To Your Thoughts

It takes practice to pay attention to and change our thought patterns. Some of the ways we think are so ingrained in us that they come to mind subconsciously. These are called automatic thoughts and for a lot of us they tend to be negative (Hoshaw, 2020). The first step to changing these thoughts is to notice them. There are a couple of ways to do this including:

Write down all your thoughts in a journal throughout the day.
Simply pause and paying attention to your thoughts throughout the day.

Once you notice your thoughts you can then make efforts to change how you think.

Reframing Thoughts With Gratitude

You can change your thoughts by intentionally correcting negative thought patterns with positive thoughts. One way to do this is to reframe our thoughts with gratitude. Replacing our negative thoughts with grateful thoughts allows us to be present in the good things around us.

In the image below is an example of how you can do this.

This takes practice! You can practice by journaling your negative thought patterns and then writing a replacement thought of gratitude. Even simply confronting negative thoughts in our mind with grateful thoughts can make a huge impact to our thought life.

The more attention we put into having thoughts of gratitude, the easier it becomes to think grateful or positive thoughts naturally. To practice this now you can write out in your journal five negative thoughts you’ve had today and five reframed thoughts of gratitude.

References

Hoshaw, C. (2020). “Are You Kind to Yourself? Tracking Your Thoughts Might Surprise You” https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/are-you-kind-to-yourself-tracking-your-thoughts-might-surprise-you

Mayo Clinic Staff (2022). “Stress Management” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950

Leaving “Should” Behind

Have you ever gotten stuck in thinking about how things “should” be? Or feeling inferior because of all the things you “should” be doing?

Being stuck on all the “shoulds” can fill us with feelings of guilt, disappointment, and self-loathing.

What if we left behind the “shoulds”? What if we just embraced who we are and the life we are living? In reality the only thing “should” ever did was stress us out! It’s like a visitor that over stayed it’s welcome and complained the whole time.

Let’s accept that “should” never cared about all the great things we were already doing. I’m letting “should” go. Instead I’m accepting myself and allowing myself to feel joy in the present. Will you join me?

Defining Holistic Health

When we think about being healthy we often have a hyper focus on physical health. Physical health is important but there are so many sides to who we are as people. Today is all about reflecting on what it means to be holistically healthy.

I made this graphic to show all the different sides of health! It is empowering to see all the ways we can be taking care of ourselves!

What do these areas of health mean to you?

Mental Health: focused on the health of our thought process, story, the way we see others and ourselves, and personality traits.
Emotional Health: processing feelings and focused on the emotions we experience. This can also include our ability to emotionally connect with others and to the work we do.
Spiritual Health: our connection to something greater then ourselves. Can be connected to our sense of purpose.
Sexual Health: our expression and fulfillment of our sexual needs.
Physical Health: involves taking care of our physical body. This can involve nutrition, exercise, and sleep.
Social Health: the health of connections we have with other people in our lives. This can also include healthy boundaries.
Intellectual Health: this type of health is how we challenge our mind and memory. It can involve learning new things or practicing mental stimulation games.

Which of these areas of health are most important to you?

What are you health goals?

How to Budget Your Energy

One of the biggest lessons about life with chronic illness I’ve learned is how to budget my energy. For myself and a lot of people living with chronic illness our bodies experiences fatigue and energy differently. I can’t speak for other people but I will share what this has looked like for me.

I’ve learned to think of energy budgeting as a series of deposits and withdrawals. Things that take energy are withdrawals and the things that fill you with energy are deposits. When living with a chronic illness there are types of activities that take a lot of energy for us that the average person does not consider taking any energy. This could be something as simple as a shower, getting ready for the day, driving to work, or cooking a meal. Deposits of energy are things that give us energy this could be taking a nap, taking rest breaks, or pacing ourselves when doing a difficult activity.

For me personally I am evaluating my energy levels throughout the day. There are days where I start the day at a yellow and have to be careful with how much I push myself that day. There have also been days when my day started out and I was completely exhausted and unable to go to work or do my normal life activities. Then there have been days when I start out with a lot of energy on one of the greens. But have had to be careful to not take too much advantage of the unexpected energy and deplete what I have.

The most important part of evaluating your energy is to simply notice. Notice what your body is telling you it needs. If you notice you are very tired is it possible to make a deposit by taking a small break or a nap? It’s even good to journal about patterns you’ve noticed in the week or month about things that have been draining or adding to your energy. Below are some helpful tips of what helps me budget my energy:

Develop routines that support your energy. This could be going to bed and waking up at certain times. Eating foods that give you energy or doing light exercise to stimulate your energy.
Be willing to say ‘no’. There have been times when there were fun activities going on with my family or friends and I’ve had to learn to be able to say ‘no’ when I didn’t have enough energy to go. There are activities that can be more taxing then others and it’s important to know your limits and when to say ‘no’ and when to say ‘yes’.
Letting others help you. This is one of the hardest for me. There are times I don’t have the energy to keep up and need help! It’s okay to ask for and receive help from others. Sometimes it makes a world of difference!