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Most people I’ve interviewed who tend to stay unstuck avoid negative energy and whatever deflates or dulls their energy. At the same time, they don’t hide from human suffering in the world.

Giving up chronic negativity or anger is akin to giving up an addictive substance—you might find a feeling of emptiness and depression underneath. It takes courage to risk this journey and we usually need companions at our side, whether it be a support group, good friends, a psychotherapist, or community.

Gratitude, which creates a high vibration of energy, is a powerful way to move through negativity. I don’t want this to sound saccharine, because it’s not. Gratitude opens us to a bigger world view. When we remember to be thankful that we can see, walk, have enough to eat, a bed, a heated home, friends, family, indoor plumbing, and access to education, and in turn be aware of those who live without clean water, shelter, and safety, and with a fraction of the opportunities we have, we may stop being so self-absorbed. In turn our vision can expand to take in the wonders of creation—to appreciate the chirping of a bird, the taste of a ripe peach, the opening of a leaf, a child’s smile, a warm body nestled with ours—is manna to every cell and fiber of our being.

Here’s a story that illustrates the power of seeing the beauty in creation: on a recent canoe and camping trip most of us were awakened, some with obvious irritation, by a very active woodpecker. A little while later my friend David emerged from his tent smiling and with perfect accuracy reproduced the phrase, rhythm, and cadences of the woodpecker’s morning ritual. “If my son Matthew were here he’d turn it into a drum piece,” he said. David brought a sense of freshness and delight to the situation that most of us had overlooked—same event, different experience.

47. Feel the Power of Resisting Your Impulses

There is great power in being able to let your sudden impulses pass through without acting on them. A quiet joy emerges when you find the deeper peace of staying steady in the face of external glitz, stimulation, and sense desires. This is difficult to do in a culture in which every store, every ad or commercial is arranged to pull at your impulses and get you to believe you really need all kinds of stuff to be fulfilled, attractive, or happy. We are seduced daily with images of sweeter, bigger, better, sexier, classier, more attractive, or lots of snazzy new features. Following an impulse unaccompanied by reason when getting into a new relationship after having had several catastrophes can result in yet another painful story.

Being able to resist impulses has long-reaching effects according to Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow study,” as described by Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence. In the study four-year-old children were given the option of having one marshmallow immediately or having two if they could wait while the person administering the study “took a few minutes to run an errand.” The children were then left alone in a room with the marshmallow on the table. Those who were able to wait for the two-marshmallow reward struggled hard—they would cover their eyes, rest their heads in their arms, talk to themselves, play games with their hands and feet, and even try to go to sleep. The ones who grabbed the one marshmallow did so almost immediately. Fourteen years later, there were striking differences between the “grab the marshmallow group” and the plucky kids who were able to restrain themselves for fifteen minutes.

According to Goleman, “Those who had resisted temptation at four were now, as adolescents, more socially competent: personally effective, self-assertive, and better able to cope with the frustrations of life. They were less likely to go to pieces, freeze, regress under stress, or become rattled and disorganized when pressured. They embraced challenges and pursued them instead of giving up even in the face of difficulties, they were