The Off Seasoner:

I found a sticky note when I was moving out of my house at the end of last year. It said:

• Lose 10 pounds
• Move to Europe
• Start teaching dance classes regularly
• Cultivate gratitude

These were all resolutions I had written down last year. Resolutions I have achieved exactly none of. And that’s when I decided that not only do I hate New Year’s resolutions, but I am boycotting them. My life keeps changing, and that is by design, but I’ve been trying to lose the same 10 pounds every year since college. No matter how I change my current situation, I don’t make enough money or have enough time to do what I enjoy or practice enough self-care or develop likable qualities or travel to enough places. Ever. Not even close. And every year I set a goal and don’t make a plan and the years comes and goes and I always feel like I’m treading water in this familiar, shallow, and directionless pool. This year was no different. I didn’t achieve a single thing that I wanted to.

When I looked at this list I felt like a failure. A person that doesn’t try hard enough, doesn’t succeed, and nothing good ever happens to. But even when clouded by my wildly overdeveloped and deeply entrenched sense of self-pity, only a fraction of a second of perspective was needed to allow myself to see that despair wasn’t warranted, far from it. I have an amazing life.  I’m healthy, I have friends and family that love me, I have the ability and time to do the things that I love like writing this blog and dancing and traveling all over Mexico. Being able to live in a foreign country just because I want to have that experience and learn a new language is an incredible privilege.

I realized there was only one thing on what had somehow become my list of sad failures that I could salvage, cultivating gratitude. And I have a lot to be grateful for. Probably because I land on the societal average of spiritual bankruptcy and self-interest I had been operating under the assumption that once good things happened to me then and only then would I start to be grateful. Surely there was no need to appreciate my present until it matched or surpassed everyone I follow on Instagram whose success in whatever form I am mildly yet constantly threatened by.

But how does one even practice gratitude? Do I write in my gratitude journal every morning and set an intention of gratitude during my yoga practice, and the universe rewards my non-actionable but secret (and therefore nobler) do-gooding with the things that I want in life?

I don’t have a final answer yet but I can tell you that so far the answer seems to be no. It’s a practice which takes effort since it’s my nature to resist anything that is difficult without an immediate reward. But what does seem to be happening is that split second of perspective comes more often and lasts longer despite my tendency to be upset about everything that happens to me. When things are difficult or uncomfortable as they often are and especially have been the last several months, being grateful for what I do have takes me out of that negative moment and allows me to step back, taking stock of the larger picture and remembering my place in it.

Ultimately what I’ve discovered and did not expect to happen. with my small and honestly half-hearted attempt, is that cultivating gratitude not only comforts me in dark moments but also makes me happy, something that I am coming more and more to accept as the ultimate reward.