Daily Gratitude: This definition comes from the PsychCentral website: “In psychology, a ‘trigger’ is a stimulus that causes a painful memory to resurface. A trigger can be any sensory reminder of the traumatic event: a sound, sight, smell, physical sensation, or even a time of day or season.” The key word there as it applies to this quote is “reminder” since that refers to something in the past. It often takes intense work to decrease the intensity of a response to a trigger but if you can just keep in the front of your mind the thought that you are being sucked into the past, it might help. Continue to reinforce (in your non-triggered moments) that this is the present and the trigger just shoots your thoughts into the past but you are still in the present. Maybe that can help keep your feet on the ground and make your “stay” in the past shorter and shorter. Think of it as fishing. Although the fishing hook has been tossed way out there, into the past, you are still standing on the shore (the present) and you have the power to reel your memory in and bring it back to the present. Sometimes you’ve hooked a whale and that experience will be more intense and take longer to reel in. Other times you will have hooked a small minnow that you can pull in easily and quickly. The thing about the whale, though, is that the more you practice reeling it in, the stronger and more adept you get at it and it will become easier. What happens to many, though, is that they just fling themselves into the ocean (or whatever body of water) along with the hook. They no longer have their feet on the ground – they are no longer in the present. They have tossed their entire being in the water. They’ve lost their ability to bring things (memories) back to the present to relieve themselves of that pressure. If the fishing concept doesn’t work for you, find some other analogy (or simile or whatever the right descriptor is) that contains something to keep you grounded so you’re no longer floundering around in the past.

Daily Gratitude: I find this a valuable reminder especially in this time of upheaval in our country (and probably in the world but my short sightedness leads me to think only about the stuff that directly affects me. I should work on that). We take so much for granted here when we should be looking around for things to be grateful for (it doesn’t really take much looking). The feelings and vibrations created by feeling and expressing gratitude are so much better than any other. Why that isn’t our default position instead of being negative? Because It’s how we’ve survived all these eons. Our primal brain is focused primarily on picking up what it perceives as danger (which makes it look for things that are negative). I am making more of an effort to find gratitude all around me and I’m also trying to not have it he an effort. That should be the goal. Try setting the timer on your phone for an interval of your choosing (an hour or every four hours etc) and have it go off to remind you to take 10-30 seconds at least to look around and specify the things you’re grateful for. Are you willing to change your “taking it for granted” attitude to “wow I’m really grateful for…”?

Daily Gratitude: This is why it’s good to do an evening review, either in writing or in your head. Hopefully it will help you realize you accomplished something that day. And again it may be just planting seeds but at least you started something. There’s no requirement that everything you work on be finished but just that it was some effort toward something constructive. Do you know what you did last week? Could you describe and quantify your activities? With the fast pace of this world, I would bet you’d miss something. This nightly review will stimulate your tomorrow. It will get your mind in gear to either continue gaining on your momentum or to begin to conquer the inertia. Try it for a couple of days to see the effect it has on your life.