Some 10th Step Questions on Gratitude

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have some problems with gratitude. Simply put, I take most of the world and my life for granted and I don't spontaneously see the enormous gifts I receive.  Now, recognizing the problem and finding a way to address it are two very different things. I looked around for a while and finally found a suggestion that I ask myself three questions at the end of the day as part of my 10th Step daily review:

What have I received today?

What have I given today?

What difficulties have I caused?

Each of these questions is to be answered in detail.  So, I went to my home group this morning - clearly a gift.  But I have to also be grateful to each member for taking the trouble to come to a 6 AM meeting, to the church for making the space available, to the people who built the church annex we meet in, to the trees that gave the wood for the building, to everyone who contributed to making electricity available so we can see....  It comes to a pretty long list.  Of course at a certain point I arbitrarily cut it off, but (I hope) not before I've gotten the point: I've received a lot from a lot of sources.

Then it's on to what I have given.  Compared to the first list this one is always shockingly short.

As for what difficulties I have caused, again I have to look at the stuff I spontaneously just ignore.  Not signalling before a turn, blocking a supermarket aisle, forgetting a home group member's name, being a few minutes late for an appointment....

The net result of this brief exercise is a daily realization of just how little I give in comparison to what I receive.  This leads to two action items: I should try to be conscious of the gifts as they are received rather than only during my evening 10th step review and I should get off my butt and give more.

Try it.  It really is an interesting and productive exercise.