How practicing gratitude got me through 2020

You and I both know — 2020 has been unexpectedly strange and challenging. It’s a year of heartbreaks, loss, and a whole of discomfort and pain.

When the outbreak started back in March, my husband and I canceled our trip to France and Italy. A lot of our friends left the city to be with their families while we decided to stay put in Manhattan. I still vividly remember a few days before the official lockdown was in place, my husband left his office early and told me to meet him outside Trader Joe’s. We were happy that there wasn’t a line outside; we waltzed right in thinking we acted early — only to find rows and rows of empty shelves. “Oh, crap.” None of the nearby supermarkets had much left, either.

Well, all of them still had ice cream. So we bought two tubs of talenti. Better something than nothing?

Nothing is really unique about my story of 2020. Like many, my husband and I worked from home and carried on with a new “regular” routine. We haven’t been able to see our family and close friends and we miss them dearly. While fortunately, my husband’s job has not been affected by the pandemic, I did lose several clients from my marketing agency; many of them also couldn’t pay their service fees for a few months because they ran out of cash. But that didn’t stop me from continue supporting them because I understood the hardships and I wanted them to survive. It was unfortunate, but I enjoyed being able to lend a hand. I did, however, have to furlough a team member who’s worked with me for nearly 2 years.

The real challenge I had to face

A lot of the people around me (and myself included) assumed that my biggest obstacle of the year was losing clients and downsizing my business. But the real challenge I had to come face to face with was a big fat, scary but invisible, intangible monster — anxiety. I dealt with the worst anxiety attacks I’ve ever come across in my life and I couldn’t even really explain why I was feeling anxious.

In fact, I felt embarrassed to have anxiety because yes, my business got affected but I still have food to eat, a place to stay, and everyone I cared about is healthy and well. Every single day in the news, I would read about someone losing her entire family to COVID, others having to die alone in the hospital, and countless store owners needing to shut down their businesses… what is there for me to be anxious about? So I didn’t talk to anyone about what I was going through — and that caused even more stress.

It got serious when physically, I started experiencing what I thought was a “stuffy pain” in my chest; I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I had trouble sleeping, and later found out it was hypertension.

The usual self-care activities didn’t seem to help

There are a few things I regularly do to allow myself to consistently find balance in my daily routine. I learned the importance of taking care of myself, mentally and physically, so I have a few self-care routines up my sleeve. But none of the usual things seemed to do much.

So finally, I decided to tell my mom what I was going through.

A chat with my mom

I speak to my mom regularly, almost on a day-to-day basis but I chose not to talk about my anxiety with her at first because I’m supposed to be the “calmer one” between the two of us. I also didn’t want to worry her. Most importantly, knowing we won’t be able to see each other for a long while, I also wasn’t sure if I was going to burst into tears during the conversation, making it seem worse than it really was.

However, I was glad I did raise it because my mom’s suggestion made all the difference.

She suggested that I create a new activity for myself that surrounds the idea of what I feel grateful for, shifting the emotional focus onto embracing gratitude. “You can always rely on gratefulness,” she said, “it won’t fail you.”

And I guess it was the “new activity” part that really stood out to me. Because that means actual action.

The difference between being grateful and practicing gratitude

I dedicated the monthly calendar section in my planner to my daily gratitudes.

I would say I am a grateful person. I appreciate the many big and small things and am thankful for the many wonderful people in my life. But I’ve never actually thought about “practicing gratitude” as an exercise.

The day after I had that chat with my mom, I thought about this “new activity” and how I’m going to make it stick. I really like the idea of actively thinking about what I’m grateful for every morning to start the day on a positive note, so I decided that it should be incorporated into my morning routines.

To make sure I turn it into a habit, I gave myself 3 simple “rules” to follow:

I think about one thing (or one person) I’m grateful for when I’m doing my morning skincare routine.
I write it down in my planner before starting daily tasks.
I have to number them and they cannot be repeated.

The moment I realized I was really practicing gratitude

At first, it was very easy. I would think of what I was writing as soon as I finished brushing my teeth. But as days go by, I had to think harder to avoid the general “I’m grateful for my mom” sort of thing. Sometimes, I would find myself massaging my face with a face oil for a lot longer than usual because I was still thinking. But that was when I realized I was really exercising my brain and searching for all the silver linings.

And I forgot when exactly it was, but because I shifted my focus to this “new activity,” I forgot about my anxious feelings. Every day, I felt lighter, and more and more content.

Some of my personal favorites

As 2020 comes to its end, I decided to randomly flip through my planner to share a few that I’ve written down (in no particular order):

Extremely thankful that Kevin (my husband) is into cooking — he tried a new recipe yesterday and it actually turned out AMAZING
Thankfully Michael’s is open now so I could see how big of a canvas and how thick of threads I need to make mommy’s birthday present
Grateful for those delivering our food orders in the RAIN
Thank you, building, for having a nice rooftop space for us to hang
Whoever invented the gua sha tool, THANK YOU
Thank goodness for having in-unit laundry
Grateful for Jo and Oli (our friends who live nearby) — wouldn’t have been able to go hiking and camping if it wasn’t for them
Started enjoying creating content again thanks to Ashley (my photographer friend)
Grateful for having a functioning brain that can still absorb knowledge and information
Thankful for FaceTime — learned how to make sea bass soup from mom last night

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I hope you enjoy reading my story and my experience. Do you actively practice gratitude? How did you start and what’s your experience like? Share it with me by leaving a comment a below!

As always, and especially for this particular blog post, thank you for stopping by Happily Ever Style. Without your reads, your likes and comments on my social media channels, without your support in general, I wouldn’t be able to continue doing what I enjoy doing the most. I’m truly grateful for you.

May 2021 bring us more joy and more reasons to be grateful.

xoxo,

Tricia

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