How to feel grateful even when you hate your life. A Happy Hour Conversation with Tammy Furey

 

I'm speaking to Tammy Furey. Tammy is a Coach for parents, a 3 Principles practitioner, and she is currently writing a book about her unique take on gratitude.

Gratitude is a scientifically proven answer to happiness but Tammy noticed many of her clients were struggling with it. Tammy had an insight about gratitude and her passion now is sharing her understanding so it can help others. In this show, Tammy shares her philosophy about the three stages of gratitude:

What you'll learn from the show:

The misunderstanding in gratitude is offering highly conceptual forms of gratitude practice when people are simply not ready. When you are depressed, down, anxious and sad, being told that you should be grateful for your life is laughable, unhelpful and may lead you to abandon any ideas of bringing gratitude into your life. It is the equivalent of trying to put the roof on a house that is still installing the ground floor: the whole thing doesn’t fit and will collapse. This is what has lead Tammy to the Red, Amber, Green system of gratitude.

• Red: When we're in a low state of mind, what we're able to access is so much less than usual therefore feeling grateful about high concepts like the roof over our head can feel challenging. When finding yourself at this level, Tammy suggests looking around you at the smallest things that naturally evoke gratitude in you - that could be a leaf, the sound of a bird singing, the scent of your favourite perfume, or a much-loved ornament. When we let go of the 'I should feel grateful for my marriage/health/roof over my head', we can allow ourselves to open up to the smallest things we notice that we feel grateful for.

• Amber: At this stage, we're able to notice more things to be grateful for, quite organically and without effort so we're then able to look at the things in our lives which are a bit of a challenge for us for feel gratitude for.   Tammy gives the example of money, which many of us find a difficult topic but when we're at this stage, we can feel grateful for the gift of electricity... even when we're paying the electricity bill. :)

• Green: When we're in our highest states of minds, that's when we are able to feel gratitude, very naturally, for all kinds of things, including high concepts like the roof over our head or our families, no matter what the external circumstances.

The system builds your understanding and allows your gratitude practice to broaden and deepen as you become open to explore the many ways gratitude can be expressed and played with. This also allows for massively cheeky contradictions and paradoxes!