Looking Outwards: The Part of Gratitude We Often Miss
Thought For The Week
So much of modern life encourages us to focus on ourselves. We think about what we want, how we’re doing, how we feel about it, what needs to change.
Much of my own work is built around this too. I spend my days helping people build confidence, develop healthier habits, better understand themselves, and create lasting change.
But as with all things, I wonder if there’s a tipping point. Because when so much of our attention is focused inwards, we can start to lose a bit of perspective.
Our problems feel bigger, our ambitions feel more pressing, and the gap between where we are and where we want to be feels more significant.
There's the weight of my goals, my choices, my progress, my responsibility. Hope and expectation, as well as disappointment and failure, can turn into a burden that we feel like we’re carrying alone.
And we can become less attentive to other people too. It's difficult to remain curious about what's happening around us when our own thoughts and concerns are taking up so much space.
It becomes a surprisingly isolating way to see the world.
Of course, very little in our lives really begins and ends with us.
The coffee you drank this morning. The clothes you're wearing. The road you drove along. The tree that’s shading you. The phone you're reading this on.
We can appreciate any of these things for what they immediately add to our lives.
But we can also follow the threads back a little further.
Someone grew and harvested the coffee. Someone designed and made the clothes. Someone planned, built and maintains (!) the road. Someone planted the tree decades ago. Someone designed the phone and developed the technology that makes it work.
This is the part of gratitude I think we sometimes overlook.
We tend to think of gratitude as noticing and appreciating the good things in our lives. But we can also recognise where those things came from.
Follow those threads out far enough (or really not that far at all) and it becomes difficult to look at my life, my progress, my achievements without also seeing how much of it has always been shared.
Exercise Focus
We set goals, track progress, weigh, measure. We focus on how our bodies look and feel, what they're capable of, and whether they're changing as we'd hoped.
A workout might feel good because we lifted more than last time. A run might feel disappointing because it was slower than we wanted. Someone else's strength, fitness or body might become another point of comparison.
Exercise directs a lot of attention inwards, towards ourselves. My goals. My body. My progress. My responsibility to keep going.
But there are plenty of other things we can notice if we look outwards too.
We can appreciate the small things we might otherwise miss. A favourite song coming on. Cool air conditioning on a hot day. Fresh air when we step outside. Even the nice-smelling hand soap in the changing rooms.
We can think about what helped us get here in the first place. Someone who encouraged us to start. A coach who taught us something we still use years later. A friend whose example inspired us.
We can see someone lifting an impressive weight without letting it become another point of comparison. We can simply look and think, that's cool. They're getting on with their own version of training.
Looking beyond our own performance doesn't mean it matters any less. It just helps put it into perspective.
Nutrition Focus
We can spend a lot of time thinking about calories, protein, fibre, energy, health. But there's always more to food than its nutritional value.
Your next meal might be one of the easiest places to practise looking outwards.
A recipe might have come from a friend or family member. An ingredient might remind us of a holiday, a country, or a different culture. The food itself connects us to the people who grew, made and transported it, as well as the weather, soil, and seasons that made it possible.
Following some of these threads gives us more to appreciate and enjoy, and reminds us how much sits beyond our own little corner of the world.
Even when we're eating alone, thinking about where our food came from makes it feel more shared.
Explore More
From the archive: Self-Awareness vs Self-Surveillance: How Tracking, Metrics, and Data Work Against You explores what happens when paying attention tips over into constant self monitoring, and how tracking, measuring and analysing can add more pressure than it relieves.
Book: Enchantment by Katherine May explores how paying closer attention to the world around us can help us rediscover a sense of wonder and connection in the ordinary, everyday parts of life.
Recipe: My Garlic Prawn & Cherry Tomato Linguine is a quick, easy way to make the most of a glut of seasonal, summer tomatoes. Making the sauce from fresh tomatoes barely takes any longer than reaching for a can, and I always think it tastes so much better.
Takeaway
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