BE A GOOD "APPRECIATOR"

I have a lot of wonderful aspects of my life--a happy marriage, a nice place to live, work I love and a really hot sports car (that didn't cost a huge amount of money. I feel good about that), but I also have crappy days when nothing seems to go right. I mess up and double book clients. I get caught in traffic snarl-ups and I run late everywhere.

Sometimes life sucks....but not usually.

It's hard to remember the times you found a parking spot close to the front or when you didn't get the flu that everyone else got. We forget the good stuff when other things are very frustrating. I'm not recommending that you go all Pollyanna on everything, but just that it's important to see the whole picture in life. If we never see how our efforts are earning us good things, we miss our successes and focus only on our failures.

Most individuals have some of both. (Not failing isn't even a good thing; it means you're not risking anything and growing requires risk.) Very, very few of us don't succeed at something and not seeing a success means we don't get to learn from it. After all, we need to see when we've done something that works. When clients come in, telling me that their relationships have gone pretty well since our last session, I always ask Why? What did you do right? What did you do differently?

In my doctoral training, asking why was presented as a bad thing because people can feel defensive when why comes up and this is true. But I'm not talking about an accusatory why; I really want to understand--Why did this change? What did you do differently? Because if things were going badly in your relationship before and now they're better, maybe something you did actually worked.

We need to appreciate our successes, need to see the stuff that doesn't go wrong. This kind of perspective gives a balance to the bad we notice and helps us to aim our behavior better next time.

Appreciating the good stuff in our lives helps us to make better choices. Clients sometimes come in, telling me that their spouse is terrific, but they--the client--are a terrible, lousy person. Not possible. You picked the spouse; you had to have said yes to the proposal or to have proposed yourself. Your living with your wonderful spouse has to give him/her something. Seeing what you've done well or what you've inherited through very good luck (great athletic ability, your own kind of intelligence) helps you deal with the challenging moments that come with every life.

I have a daughter in medical school who worries because some other students have better grades than she does--never mind that she's nowhere near the lowest in her class and that those who graduate with a "C" will still be our physicians in a few years. And some of them will be really terrific doctors. She doesn't always do as well as she feels her massive studying should yield. But I point out to her that she's in medical school and that takes quite a bit of success, in itself. It seems to me that being where she's at needs to convince her of her ability.

We don't tend to over-value ourselves. Even those who bluster and brag are often covering a deep sense of not being good-enough. But getting through each day is a miracle--really, think about the people who don't make it. It's not so important how we look after coming through the storm, but that we make it through.

Appreciate yourself and your blessings. Give yourself the recognition you deserve.