Some mornings, I wake up and the weight of the world settles on my chest before my feet even touch the floor. The news. The rhetoric. The way scarcity and fear seem to be winning, inspiring people toward selfishness and harm rather than toward each other.
I know you feel it too—this heaviness we're all carrying. The exhaustion of trying to stay open-hearted when the world seems intent on closing us down.
And yet. And yet, there's this practice a young woman taught me years ago that has become my lifeline. Not because it makes the chaos disappear, but because it reminds me that joy and meaning still exist, still matter, still deserve my attention even when—especially when—everything feels hard.
"This is my gratitude achievement," she said
She was a student at Child Haven's school in Nepal, and as she said these words, her smile was so radiant it could have powered the entire valley. I was in the audience watching her dance, and something about the way she said "achievement" stopped me.
Achievement seemed counterintuitive to gratitude. At least to the gratitude I knew—the kind where you sit with a journal before bed or bow your head in prayer, humbly cataloging the good things that happened to you. Gratitude as remembrance. Gratitude as reflection on what has already been given.
But she was talking about something different entirely.
The three-part practice of anticipatory gratitude
Every morning, she explained in her broken Nepalese-English, she sits quietly and thinks about the day ahead. (I do this too, but usually in the frantic context of cross-referencing my calendar with my to-do list, my coffee going cold beside me.) As she considers what lies ahead, she scans for those things—big and small—that she knows will bring her meaning or joy.
"I choose my three best things," she said, "and then I forget."
Then she forgets. She releases them. Lets them go.
And then, when those moments arrive—when she's lost in the music, when she feels free in her body, when her heart cracks open—she remembers: This was a moment I was waiting to be grateful for.
"Today, when I was dancing," she told me, "I remembered that this was a moment I was waiting to be grateful for."
I think about her often. I wonder if she still practices this, and whether it sustains her through whatever challenges she faces in her world, just as it sustains me in mine.
What this practice actually does (and why it matters now)
I've been practicing her form of gratitude for years now, and honestly? It's one of the only things keeping me tethered to hope right now.
Because here's what happens. When I anticipate the good—really pause to imagine the moment when I'll giggle with my granddaughter, or feel the sun on my face during my walk, or sit down to write this blog—I'm making a quiet, radical promise to myself. I'm saying: There will be moments of beauty today. I will be present for them. They will be my compass.
And in a world that feels increasingly committed to fear and division, that small act of anticipation becomes an act of resistance. It's a refusal to let the chaos consume all my attention. It's a way of staying soft when everything around me is hardening.
The second part—the living of the moment when it arrives—this is where the magic lives. Because my heart has been waiting, seeking, foreknowing. There's already something tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me: This is it. This is the moment. Be here now. The joy becomes richer, sweeter, more poignant because I've been holding space for it.
And then at night, when I revisit these moments in contemplation, I'm not just practicing gratitude. I'm building evidence. Evidence that even on the hardest days, there is still good worth seeking. Evidence that my attention is a choice, and I can choose to let beauty and connection shape me as much as the pain does.
This morning, I sat with my tea
This morning, as I thought about my day ahead, I chose three moments to anticipate: the warmth of this mint tea I'm drinking now (made in her honour, always), the way my face would relax as I revisited the photos from that trip to Nepal, and the flutter in my chest as I shared this practice with you.
And then I forgot. I went about my morning—the emails, the worries, the scrolling through news that makes my stomach clench.
But as the time approached to write this, something was already there, waiting. A quiet knowing. An opening.
And here I am—living and then reliving my gratitude achieved. Feeling the steam from this tea curl toward my face. Seeing her radiant smile in my mind's eye. Feeling the privilege of this moment with you, this connection across the chaos.
An invitation
What if you tried this tomorrow morning? Not as one more thing on your overwhelming to-do list, but as a small rebellion against the weight of these times.
Sit for just a moment. Scan your day. Find three things—small is fine, mundane is fine—that you know will bring you joy or meaning. Picture them. Feel them in your body. Then release them.
And when those moments arrive, let yourself remember: This is a moment I was waiting to be grateful for.
It won't fix the brokenness. It won't solve the political chaos or make the fear-mongering stop.
But it might—just might—help you stay open. Stay present. Stay soft enough to still feel joy without guilt, to still extend kindness without exhaustion, to still believe that your attention to beauty is not a luxury but a necessity.
Because the world needs people who haven't forgotten how to feel grateful in real time, who remember that hope isn't naive—it's a practice. A choice. An achievement.
If this practice speaks to you and you'd like to explore other ways to stay grounded and hopeful in challenging times, I'd love to support you. Whether through coaching or retreat, there are deeper wells of resilience waiting for you to discover.