Gratitude is the Magic Strategy
It begins to change things..
Published in
Jul 24
I had my own little experience with the magic of gratitude.
Yesterday I was lamenting about the fact that after a year, I still haven’t found a consistent, long-standing close friendship since moving to Charlotte. On Sunday, I was really feeling down… wondering what it is about me that causes no one to be interested in making me the kind of friend that they call and say “What’s up, you wanna go get sum’n to eat?”. I have no one like that yet.
By the end of the day, I thought to myself, why am I not following my own advice? I literally wrote in an article on Medium that one should focus on the positive and not dwell on the negative. I decided to apply that to myself!
I thought about… how far I’ve come.
It made me think of this song… Let’s see how far (I’ve) come!
I moved here from Phoenix, AZ, where I used to come home everyday with no prospects of having any activities to do with friends. I spent the weekends just running errands, going to restaurants, or hiking on my own. I was begging the Universe to send an old friend to Phoenix for the weekend so I could have something social to do. I joined a few meetup.com events, but there wasn’t really anything exciting going on with those events.
Then I made the choice to move to Charlotte, NC a year ago. I immediately joined a few meetups here, and it has immediately made a world of difference. The attendees of the meetups here are so friendly and engaging. Add that to the fact that Charlotte has so much fun stuff to do for adults of all age ranges. What a great city this is!
My new city — Charlotte! [photo taken by author]
But back to me…
Over time, I have really come out of my cage, so to speak. One social event led to another social event, and now my social competencies have improved and expanded! Now I have the ability to speak to anyone and introduce myself without that nagging feeling of unworthiness that I used to feel. At first I had to force myself to speak to people. I still do sometimes… but it’s much more effortless. And I have events to attend so many times every week! And I do all of these things with REAL PEOPLE! Actual human beings!… talking to me, and I’m talking to them! It’s totally surreal, and I didn’t believe it was possible.
Compare this to my solitary existence in Phoenix just a year ago.
So I’ve truly come a long way.
How dare I complain that I haven’t completed my journey yet?
A wise man never dwells on what he doesn’t have. He remains in constant appreciation of what he has already, while being in pursuit of what he wants.
— Daniel Chidiac from “Who Says You Can’t? You Do”
I changed my thoughts immediately and I just thanked the Universe that I do have a social life now.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
My mom calls me her “little social butterfly”. (No matter how grown I get, I’m still her little baby sometimes…) She says I’m always busy with some event or another.
My sister says I have achieved my goal that I told her I wanted to accomplish: to be a social person. When I set up my wireless at my new home, I even named my network “Homecoming-Social” because I was coming back to my home state… and one of my main goals was to be more social and to have a “social life”!
After showing gratitude yesterday for how far I've come, I even received one affirmation/confirmation, and one possible change to my friendship status.
The affirmation I received was that someone noticed I had joined a meetup group called “Shy People” and he stated “I didn’t know you were shy… Yeah, every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been talkative and chatting with different people.” It was gratifying that someone outside of myself could see something that confirmed the change that I have made in the last year.
And the potentially significant change in my life that occurred — seemingly as a result of my decision to be grateful — was that I had a text exchange with another black gay man that I met long ago at meetup. He said that he wanted to be good friends with me, but he kind of held back because he didn’t want to give the wrong impression that he wanted to date me. (This could be insulting, but it wasn’t because I never had any romantic interest in him whatsoever either.)
But long story short, at least we have now breached that barrier between us. Although I don’t know what the future holds as far as our future prospects for a close friendship, at least now there is a possibility I will have that friend that I can call up and say “Hey, you hungry? Wanna grab sum’n to eat?”
All because I changed my woeful mindset to a grateful one.
And that makes great things begin to happen.
