A Little Big Picture Perspective Goes a Long Way

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

The act of counting one’s blessings is sort of a cultural cliché, but it’s exactly the sort of thing you should be practicing on a regular basis in order to inject some perspective into your life. Having a rough day? Relationship troubles? Bank account in double digits? Like a psychological Hoover vacuum, these tough situations can effectively suck the happiness from your day-to-day life. If you’re feeling at the end of your rope, you can take advice from Thought Catalog‘s Brianna Wiest, who recently posted “20 Signs You’re Doing Better Than You Think You Are.”

Wiest’s list of accomplishments and conditions represent the moderate successes achieved by many, but enjoyed by only a few. The reason? Perspective. If you’re an understudy on Broadway, that accomplishment can be muddled by feelings of envy and disappointment surrounding the fact that you’re not the lead. But taking a step back and assessing all the gifts, blessings, achievements, or whatever-you-want-to-call-thems is a great way to pick yourself up, swipe the dirt off your shoulder, and keep going.

Examples from Wiest’s article:

1. You paid the bills this month, and maybe even had extra to spend on non-necessities. It doesn’t matter how much you belabored the checks as they went out; the point is that they did, and you figured it out regardless.

8. You could afford a subway ride, cup of coffee, or the gas in your car this morning. The smallest conveniences (and oftentimes, necessities) are not variables for you.

13. If you could talk to your younger self, you would be able to say: “We did it; we made it out; we survived that terrible thing.” So often people carry their past traumas into their present lives, and if you want any proof that we carry who we were in who we are, all you need to do is see how you respond to your inner child hearing, you’re going to be okay, from the person they became.

I should note that counting your blessings should help boost you up rather than keep you down. It’s important to acknowledge that you’re not starving and that you have friends or people you can count on. These are accomplishments that should be realized and digested. You did this. It’s your achievement.

On the flip side, it can sometimes be easy to use this as crutch. The goal of this exercise is not necessarily to be content with what you’ve got, especially if some outside force is subjecting you to your relative lowliness. Rather, the goal here is to hype yourself up so that you feel capable of taking the next big steps that will lead you to further happiness.