Have you ever tried a ‘gratitude rampage’?
It’s been well-documented focusing on gratitude and what you do have in life can help alleviate negative feelings about what you don’t have, but Dr Kimberly Quinn has a new take on putting this into active practice.
She calls it a “gratitude rampage”.
The ritual itself is easily done and you can do it just about anywhere, so it seems a simple way to quickly catch your train of thought if it’s going down hill, but what’s most striking here is Dr Quinn’s ability to embrace and teach gratitude given everything she’s been through. Speaking in 2020, she shared a harrowing account of the childhood she experienced with two alcoholic parents. Her house growing up was “loud and chaotic,” she reveals, and in her teen years would be “thrown against a wall,” and later left unsupported when she revealed she’d been sexually abused by another family member. Once, her mother told Dr Quinn “how much easier things would have been had she not been born at all”.
Dr Quinn has shown remarkable resilience and today is a successful psychology professor of many years and a sought-after speaker, regularly sharing her brain-training tips online. In particular, her gratitude rampage method shows itself to be a feisty insistence you can change your outlook on life if you’re ready to give gratitude a try, even after trauma, but it takes practice.
“Want to have an instant and magical turn-a-round to your day? Do this for 17 seconds,” says Dr Quinn in a video demonstrating her own gratitude:
“I’m grateful for the snow. I’m grateful for a good winter. I’m grateful for skiing. I’m grateful for the beautiful sunshine. I’m grateful that my legs work so I can be out in the woods. I’m grateful I own snow shoes. I’m grateful for my family, my friends, my health. I’m grateful for the fresh air I breathe. I’m grateful for the babbling brook that I can just contemplate and just be here and be present. I’m grateful for being present. I’m grateful for my glasses. I’m grateful for medical care. I’m grateful for the clothes on my back and grateful for our beautiful home. I’m grateful we have food on the table, every single night…“
Don’t pause, just rampage, for 17 seconds.
See what comes out for you when you let gratitude flow freely and “watch what happens in your day after that,” says Dr Quinn. “The worse your day is, the more important it is” because “to master your mind takes effort” and this is a way to “reel your mind back in” to “win your day”.
Thanks Dr Quinn for the inspiration.
For more tips like this, visit her website: Mindcraft University.
