Earlier I mentioned how surprised I was to see certain concepts from my research emerge in pairs or
groups. These “collections of concepts” have created major paradigm shifts for me in terms of the
way I think about my life and the choices I make every day.
A good example of this is the way that love and belonging go together. Now I understand that in
order to feel a true sense of belonging, I need to bring the real me to the table and that I can only do
that if I’m practicing self-love. For years I thought it was the other way around: I’ll do whatever it
takes to fit in, I’ll feel accepted, and that will make me like myself better. Just typing those words and
thinking about how many years I spent living that way makes me weary. No wonder I was tired for so
long!
In many ways, this research has not only taught me new ways to think about how I want to live and
love, it’s taught me about the relationship between my experiences and choices. One of the most
profound changes in my life happened when I got my head around the relationship between gratitude
and joy. I always thought that joyful people were grateful people. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? They
have all of that goodness to be grateful for. But after spending countless hours collecting stories
about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged:
Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who
described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their
gratitude practice.
Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human
interconnectedness and a power greater than us.
People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference
between a human emotion that’s connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with
the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.GratitudeWhen it comes to gratitude, the word that jumped out at me throughout this research process is
practice. I don’t necessarily think another researcher would have been so taken aback, but as someone
who thought that knowledge was more important than practice, I found these words to be a call to
action. In fact, it’s safe to say that reluctantly recognizing the importance of practice sparked my 2007
Breakdown Spiritual Awakening.