Jake Webster: Grateful for Gratitude - Controlling My World
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I remember the day rather vividly for being so young, I walked from the bright, painfully hot, Arizona summer heat into the ice cold, flashing bright lights of a small pharmaceutical store. Immediately, I was fascinated. You mean to tell little four-year-old me, that there were people that stayed in the back of a small, air-conditioned store in the Arizona desert while wearing white, fancy, clean lab coats, and moved small pills from a big bottle into a little bottle to get paid a ton of money to help people. That moment I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to help people, at a young age I developed a sense of fulfillment and purpose to live a life of helping people but how would I help people is a question I ponder even to this day. Does self-fulfillment and purpose result in happiness? In my experience that rarely equates to happiness.
Coming to the realization that becoming a doctor, even one that specializes in pharmaceuticals, was not ideal since the last thing I want is to be in school for too long. From the warm summer months to the chill desert winter nights and throughout the years in my youth, I would explore outside any chance I got. From my backyards to national parks I loved to connect with nature, but there was one type of park I loved besides a traditional park filled with nature and that was theme parks. Theme parks, that was where I envisioned myself as my future career goals. Helping people escape their every day, troublesome lives and make them feel happy. And, that is what I set out to do, I had my purpose of making people happy, and fulfillment of my personal happiness by one day of working in a theme park.
Before venturing into the theme park world, I was still pressured to get some form of education. Just get the piece of paper that says I did something and to help open doors for my future career. I finished my undergraduate degree in Secondary Education with a Biological Sciences focus and began to teach middle school. On the same day of getting offered a full-time teaching job, I was offered a chance to get into the theme park industry. That dream of helping people, fueled by connection to nature while adoring education as a job became a reality. I jumped from odd job to odd job within the theme park industry. Starting in a custodial role to attractions to finally landing the dream, working in the education team in the zoo-based theme park world. I pinched myself when landing my dream, taking note every day that I accomplished my dream at such a young age.
I was facilitating animal-based education tours as a tour guide and working behind the scenes as a Tours Coordinator ensuring that the tour operations ran smoothly. I had my dream of connecting to nature helping people escape their lives in exciting, adventurous ways. I quickly jumped into leadership and training opportunities, helping the personal development of myself and my team where applicable. I got everything I wanted since I was young, even before I turned 30. I accomplished my childhood dream. I was helping people, I was helping develop myself, I was helping people escape their lives and connect to nature. I landed my dream, and I hated my life.
Looking back now, I hated that period of my life. Despite having every opportunity and reaching all my personal and professional goals, I was not myself and was not happy. Happiness to me is this feeling, a sensation, that cannot always be measured in some simplistic manner. Yet during that tumultuous time in my life, I came to realize some elements that I was in control of to help my happiness. While simple, I have incorporated the following three elements that helped shape me into the person I enjoy being today. The three elements derive from a foundation of being grateful. Being grateful for all the opportunities I have had, the privilege to accomplish my life goals at a young age, and ensuring that finding happiness for myself is just as fulfilling as creating happiness for others.
I want to stress that what helps me, may not be the key to happiness with helping you or someone else, but having the grateful tools to add to your toolbox of developing self-gratitude can still aid in self-discovery of finding your happiness.
There are many elements I have utilized to help me develop my gratitude and daily happiness, but there are three that I would recommend to anyone to try today:
1. Go touch some grass, maybe hug a tree if you feel so inclined
“Time spent amongst the trees is never time wasted,” Katrina Mayer. Really! Go outside and touch some grass, get connected to nature, and get some vitamin N (Nature). Having a few moments even brief has resulted in the ability to effectively lower stress, improve focus, and various other scientifically tested health benefits. For me personally, I feel better instantly by taking 5 minutes to walk away from what is stressing me out and do some box breathing methods in the fresh outside air. The connection to nature reminds me of what I value, where I need to place my focus, and what I am grateful for. The escape to nature, even for five minutes, has supported me in more ways than I may think of in my past and today
2. Play to learn and make something
“We don’t stop playing because we grew old, we grow old because we stop playing,” George Bernard Shaw. Playing is an easy way to learn something new and create something, especially with our hands. Even playing outside as simple as jumping into a pile of leaves, does wonders for one’s mental health. Going beyond hugging trees and touching grass, when we are young we play and by playing we learn something new and connect with one another. Why does the element of play get lost when we get older? Our priorities shift and we lose focus on what drives our happiness. Being grateful connects with what we create. Go learn something new, and go create something with your hands. For me, I find being playful and making rhythm in different ways to create music especially soothing. Even safely creating exercise games in the gym helps push me to finish other goals that I otherwise would not accomplish. Fartlek running is a great example, in which playing with running at different rates helps a runner to run faster over time and change up the boredom of a traditional run - I mean, even the name is fun, Fartlek. Playing in tandem with creation helps connect ourselves to our community while developing critical thinking skills, increasing positive, personal self-esteem, and creating long-lasting relationships. Having hobbies that are personal to you to create something unique and learning a new skill, can provide feelings of fulfillment and inspire the grateful sensation of discovery.
3. Relationships: An emotional connection
“Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships,” Dr. Travis Bradberry. Effective relationships can create an understanding of one another, whether professional or personal to develop yourself in looking into other perspectives. Communicating with your actions in tandem with self-awareness can lead toward relationships that can provide insights into a world that you thought you understood. Having the chance to connect to others, while being transparent and vulnerable, has led me to create relationships that have helped me through my most challenging times. For those relationships, I am grateful and those relationships have created the drive in me to give back to others as they have given back to me. Reflecting on my faults should not hinder my future but give me a chance to grow and develop toward being the best person that I want to be.
While these three elements are ones that I utilize every day to help fuel gratitude and feel the sensation of gratefulness, there are still ways in which I am discovering how happiness and gratefulness can be in tandem within my life. I have become comfortable with who I have become but look forward to where I will grow as a human. Instead of settling, I have pushed myself into territories I never thought possible. I remember panicking thinking that I was done, I did the dream, many did not get their dream, and felt awful that I did not feel great about my accomplishments. Because of feeling grateful, I have rediscovered myself and realized how great of an accomplishment that I got to get my dream at such a young age, few do.
Now what? Where do I go? What do I do for work? Those self-reflective questions that used to scare me, now fuel me. I am grateful to be in the position that I am, and have gratitude to do so many things I never thought possible. Finding the life partner of my dreams that pushes me to develop myself as an individual. Move across the country into a city after growing up in the country, arid desert of Arizona. Leave what was my dream job of being in a theme park with animals and doing animal education while exploring leadership, to find what makes me truly happy and professionally fulfilled. While I love what I have done, I have a rare opportunity that few have and that is to find a new dream in my life all because I have practiced gratefulness and self-gratitude.
There are many ways to find gratitude and develop a state of gratefulness, yet with my short time in learning of gratefulness I have found you get what you give. There is nothing wrong with being not okay. Take the moment to reset and be self-aware to take the time you need to appreciate the big and little things in life. For me I think of hitting that dream at a young age and that I needed to take control of my life. I have given my time to education and nature, and now I work with others to help others and for that I am grateful. The philosophies of gratefulness and self-gratitude are something I practice everyday and are something I am always down to talk about. Yet, if you cannot get a hold of me, I’m probably out in nature - maybe even on a Fartlek Run - playing in the rain and if I am lucky at that time, I have a friend by my side. You get what you give in this world, and I surely believe that if I give gratitude to others that I may unlock the feeling of happiness with being grateful and inspire others to practice gratefulness and self-gratitude as well.
"It's my own design, it's my own remorse, help me to decide. Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure, nothing ever lasts forever. Everybody wants to rule the world," Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears
