The Power of Gratitude
How my time in Tulum, Mexico triggered me into practising gratitude daily and becoming a better healer.
I used to think in order to get more from life, it took a lot of work, determination, and grit. And that was it. I didn’t consider that stopping to take a second to be grateful for what is, brought positivity towards me. I didn’t think accepting and surrendering to my reality did me any good but made me complacent. And, I just thought the road to success was all about the amount of effort one puts into the journey.
Until I got to Tulum, Mexico.
Tulum was a weird place for me. I came there by chance because I had no real intention to ever live in Mexico. I was still trying to find my way back to Europe, despite the continuous lockdowns.
I was in another dark period in my life, and I was looking for an outlet. I was looking for creative inspiration and a new life, away from my mother’s home. I had only spent 3 months there, which happened to be the longest time I’ve spent there since I was 17, and already, I was sick of it. I was drowning in my own sorrows because I thought I had taken a step backward away from my dreams, rather than towards them. I didn’t have a gratitude practise in place so a lot of what I was experiencing felt bleak. I had just recently quit my job to pursue my own business endeavours.
Instead of appreciating that:
- I had the courage to pursue my own dreams and ambitions.
- I successfully got out of a toxic work environment.
- I had the means and ability to travel back from Europe to spend time with my mother, who I hadn’t seen in a year due to the pandemic.
- I had a decent savings that allowed me to invest in said business and myself.
- I had a comfortable home to go to that was peaceful and quiet, (a contrast to the city life I had just experienced), where I could collect my thoughts and set more aligned intentions.
I, instead, focused on the pains of early entrepreneurship. I was overly fearful and anxious about the future. I didn’t see the current situation as a blessing, or that there were blessings all around me. I felt that I was moving backwards because I didn’t see that my work was turning into results as quickly as I would have liked.
So, I thought the best thing that I could have done to spark my creativity, passion, and outcome driven attitude out of a rut was: to go to a place where I barely knew anyone and engross myself in an expat community I knew little about.
So, what of Tulum then?
Tulum opened up many doors for me, particularly in my spiritual practises, as a practitioner and in my own personal journey. It was a more triggering place than I anticipated though.
Through mass integration and awakening comes some realizations of what is no longer serving.
That was Tulum.
When I set the intention to go there, I wanted to be doing spiritual work. I wanted to be actively working on my business and improving that daily. I still was driven by outcomes, and needed to get to the next thing as quickly and fervently as I could, even in the spiritual wellness industry. I wanted to control the narrative as to how I would improve my business. I still needed to control, drive outcomes, and force things to happen. I quickly found out how bringing this toxic energy to the spiritual wellness space just didn’t work for me any longer. I couldn’t sustain this. I was drowning in the toxicity of my own making. And, I was also being confronted with external toxicity; and saw how it was corrupting the space too.
You attract what you reflect
Within a month of arriving I was getting everything I intended to get in Tulum. I was booking readings, teaching tarot, and connecting with other spiritual practitioners. It was all happening very quickly, which is what I wanted. But that also meant my lessons were coming in just as quickly, and it felt like every day I was also being triggered by a lot of what the expat spiritual community represents in Tulum.
I met spiritual practitioners taking up practises they really shouldn’t have been, such as shamanism and Mayan rituals, in a way that gave no real regard for the roots to where that practise came from. I saw so-called spiritual practitioners lacking any personal responsibility for their own actions; yet, telling others to take on a sense of responsibility for themselves and their healing journeys. I saw tone deaf communication by spiritualists who, whether conscious or not, were excluding people from marginalized groups’ experiences in their healings. I saw the dark side of what a sect of the spiritual industry has become. Toxic!
I saw what integrating our toxic societal systems could do to sacred practises derived from ancient, people of colours’ civilizations that chose surrender over force, chose working with the land rather than exploiting it, and chose gratitude over entitlement. And, I saw what I hated. Mainly I saw what I hated in working all those years in Banking. I saw spiritualists drive, almost exclusively toward the outcome of gain, I saw exploitation, lack of accountability and awareness, lack of appreciation for anyone and anything besides themselves. I saw spiritualists who wanted accolades for other people’s work that they had some how transformed as their “own”. I also started to be cognizant that I also shared some of those same behaviours. I adopted these behaviours as a means to survive in the corporate world, i.e. greed, entitlement, and driven only by outcomes. And, if I continued to bring that energy to the spiritual wellness industry, I too was contributing to the destruction of the teachings of our ancient ancestors. I had to develop practises opposing these; that represented: surrender, acceptance, mindfulness, and the practise that encompassed all three… gratitude.
I must confront what I had refused to confront.
And, what of gratitude?
The practise of gratitude is a practise of accountability, awareness, and acceptance.
Gratitude is the acceptance of what is; and, holding oneself accountable for the current moment. There are no outcomes to chase. There is nothing to run after or towards. It is simply having awareness of our current state and making the most out of it.
Adopting a gratitude practise was hard, because I never had one. I thought, if I were grateful for the current moment, how could I muster up the energy to get to my true desired outcome? I didn’t have the answer to that until I was triggered regularly by the toxicity that was a part of the expat “spiritual community” in Tulum. I felt I had nothing else but to have some appreciation for the little things that weren’t triggering me because so much of my experience there did.
It also helped me to stay in the present. I was going to be in Tulum for two months. And like most places that I tire of, I trigger my own anxiety by counting down the days to “exodus”. I couldn’t afford to do that to myself in Tulum. I didn’t need the added stress of hating the reality that I created and beating myself up mentally and emotionally for it.
Creating a daily gratitude practise therefore made me better; and strive to do better, in a way that forcing and driving outcomes never could. It helped me to be a better healer and understand myself better as a healer. Because I appreciated the current moment, there was nothing more for me to do in that moment. There was no act that I could do that would change the present. I had to accept and surrender to it. As a healer and as an empath, I would constantly deplete my own energies by going above and beyond to support the energies of others’. I would feel others’ pain and discomfort, and want to support them beyond my capacity to do so. At one point, when I first started reading tarot for other people, I had to stop because I ended up resenting the work I did for others. I was giving so much energy to my clients that I rarely gave that energy back to myself. I wanted to give more and do more for my clients; driving myself to feel empty. I didn’t understand that my energy is limited and in order to give to my clients, I had to give to myself first.
Gratitude changed that for me. I was able to bring more positive energy into my life and therefore had more positive energy to give. It also taught me to appreciate the current moment and the constraints in that moment. I cannot force energy. I cannot force healing others. I am only responsible for myself at this moment.
I cannot jump into the future despite my desire to. I cannot relive the past. I can only appreciate the here and now.
And, so it is…
As I have stepped away from the energy that was Tulum, gratitude is even more necessary to my daily practise. And it sounds so simple. Have gratitude. It is one of the more rudimentary practises of most spiritual teachings. But it wasn’t until I saw the toxicity in Tulum, that I was, in my own way, contributing to; did I recognise how important it was to let go and create more gratitude into my daily life.
The daily practise of gratitude is slowly becoming a turning point for me. It is teaching me to stop chasing and attract positive things in my life because I already have so much positivity to be grateful for. (And one can only attract what they are.) It is slowly teaching me to appreciate the little things; instead of simply revolving my life around the big life changing outcomes that don’t necessarily happen each and every day. I’m no longer crumbling under this idea that my life is worthless unless I hit these massive targets I set for myself. And therefore, I don’t see life as mostly a series of worthless events; where I’m constantly in a holding period until the next big thing. I am also showing up less entitled in the world, and more appreciative of it.
Separately, It has helped me to appreciate Tulum for what it was; despite all the things and people that made me uncomfortable. It was and will always be a place for growth. It was a place that will always be a part of my healing journey. It was a place where I learned that the small changes we make daily can bring momentous changes in the long run. And I am grateful for that.
