Life Choices
If you met Gayle today, you’d never guess that she suffered from depressive and suicidal thoughts as a teenager. Yet she turned her life around and has created a life of deep gratitude and meaning. This raises the million-dollar question: What makes a person make deep changes?
While Gayle can’t point to one single factor, in retrospect, she expressed gratitude for the various events and people who helped her choose life. As she matured, she has made it her mission to help others make their own life-affirming choices. Gratitude has been central in her story.
She remembers one turning point vividly. On her customary walk from the university to her apartment, she spotted a wildflower struggling to grow in the cracks of the sidewalk. Despite walking this route every day for two years, she had never once noticed the bright yellow buttercups. Suddenly, the world became a place of beauty and possibility. She was filled with enormous gratitude for the therapy and self-reflection that led to a momentous insight: She could focus on the gifts of today and a happy future instead of dwelling on past traumas.
Noticing a tiny wildflower heralded a continuing shift that signaled more positive small and large choices that would shape her life. It led to her career as a social psychology professor, a translator in Argentina, and eventually a positive psychology coach and instructor for Mentor Coach. She describes herself as a gratitude practitioner and UU Buddhist.
Appreciating her own worth and potential propelled her forward. It also took courage to act, to seek to flourish over victimhood. On the way, she left an unhealthy marriage and chose to surround herself with people who affirmed her.
When her soul mate recently died, it was books and gratitude that got her through the first year of grieving. As she read a new biography of Frederick Douglass, his accomplishments in the face of adversity led her to appreciate her own good fortune. She pored over a 700-page volume on self-determination theory and was delighted by the author’s beautiful prose instead of typical boring academic writing. She observed that gratitude arises naturally when you realize things could be worse.
Grateful for the Web of Connection
A decade as an expat in Argentina, she witnessed that things were indeed worse for countless others. She was surrounded by people with next to nothing, living in tin shacks without adequate food or heat. One day, a poor, shoeless child came to her door asking for worn-out sneakers to wear to school. Gayle gave them to her, and after the girl left, she counted her abundant blessings. Even though she and her husband had recently suffered a major financial setback, she still had her health, education, a roof over her head, food, someone to love, and a blue sky with beautiful clouds overhead. She had freedom and opportunity.
Meanwhile, when her husband totaled their only car, she first reacted by sulking as she ruminated on the huge inconveniences. But within hours, she decided instead to be grateful for her legs and public transportation. She laughed as she told me she was glad she no longer had to remember where she parked her car on trips into town.
I met Gayle (aka Dr. Scroggs) years ago as the instructor of a master class in positive psychology coaching, which I took as part of my professional coaching certification renewal process. Gayle is many things, a human first, she tells me. She’s unassuming, approachable, smart, funny, and full of references and quotes she can pull up instantaneously.
Gratitude is who she is; she oozes it. I felt energized and grateful when I interviewed her and listened to our interview later. Her presence glows.
She describes gratitude as the understanding that we are all connected. We don’t live by our efforts alone but through the grace of other people, events, and the universe. She adds that we are part of the interconnected life, the web of life.
She further explains that gratitude is multidimensional. It’s the thoughts and feelings from your mind, body, heart, and soul and your behaviors in expressing them. It’s mindfulness in noticing the good by appreciating and honoring what is going on. It is a way of being in each moment.
Gratitude at Work and School
At work and school, she feels we need a major paradigm shift. We tend to underappreciate others in our “red mark” culture. “Red marks” represent feedback on what we are doing wrong. Performance reviews and feedback constantly reinforce the red marks mentality. Imagine the possibilities if we shifted to organizational cultures that promote growth mindsets, where mistakes are expected on the road to mastery. Imagine the difference if we appreciated what folks do right, if we affirmed their potential for growth if we thought in terms of “yes, and “no, but.” Appreciation is free and goes a long way in motivating people.
On the other hand, there are times we should be able to give of ourselves without expecting appreciation. When we give without strings attached, surprising things happen for the giver and the recipient. You can try this for a mere quarter! At Aldi’s supermarkets, you put the coin in a slot to free a shopping cart and get it back when you return it. Gayle loves seeing the smiles when one person offers their cart free to an incoming customer—and how that inspires others to follow suit. Giving keeps giving when it’s not expected in unusual ways.
Gratitude is Gayle’s way of living, connecting, and empowering life. It’s about always noticing and choosing to see reality and the gifts it brings.
Here are some of her gratitude reflections:
- The older you get, the more likely you are to be in a cemetery, so every day is a gift.
- Mindfulness brings both gratitude and compassion.
- Gratitude is not an extra. If you start with gratitude, you will be an amazing leader.
- Choosing yourself means being grateful for your own life. Cherish it.
- Cure your sense of isolation and victimhood by becoming someone else’s gratitude opportunity.
- You don’t need to look for the silver lining; be grateful for the clouds.
- Gratitude makes it possible to keep going when life isn’t easy.
- Be grateful for everything. She quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
- Be discerning. There is no need to be grateful for the pain, just the lessons it brings.
Here are some of her gratitude behaviors, tools, and tips:
- She is now doing a long Thank You Tour, paying gratitude visits to people who matter to her before it is too late.
- If you want to shift your mind, shift to gratitude.
- Curate gratitude with music and art. One of her favorite songs is Gracias a La Vida.
- She sometimes asks clients to list 100 things they are grateful for. She giggles and says she can list 1000.
- Find the gifts in your own story. What you focus on grows.
- Draw out from others what they are grateful for.
- Look for something good or beautiful, and you will find it everywhere, from a bird feather in the grass to the laughter of children on a playground.
References
One of Gayle’s Gratitude Songs – Gracias A La Vida – Mercedes Sosa
How I met Gayle and where she teaches – Mentor Coach Faculty & Positive Psychology Coaching
Gayle’s website – Home | Essence Coaching
Positive Psychology and Marty Seligman – Martin E.P. Seligman | Positive Psychology Center (upenn.edu)
