Tag: gratitude journal

Accessing the Power of Gratitude

Many writers and researchers today report on the power of gratitude while drawing on neuroscience research and reports of individuals who have changed their life for the better by developing a gratitude mindset.  Kute Blackson, in a video podcast on the topic, maintains that gratitude has an expansive characteristic – the more you are grateful and express thanks for, the more you will experience things to be grateful for.  He also contends that being grateful creates true personal freedom – you will no longer be held hostage by the need for more material goods.  If you develop a gratitude mindset, there are so many things to be grateful for in your life, both large and small.  Genuine gratitude allows no room for envy of what others have or obsession with “wants”.

Developing a gratitude mindset involves focusing on what we have and/or have access to – so it is an abundance mentality.  It contrasts sharply with the anxiety and resentment that flow from a deficit mentality where the focus is on what you do not have or have access to.  Gratitude, then, is at the root of happiness, displacing dissatisfaction about the absence of something – it entails present moment awareness and thankfulness.  Wong & Brown argue that “gratitude reverses our priorities” and contributes to positive mental health and the alleviation of mental ill-health resulting from “toxic emotions”.

The power of gratitude

The benefits from gratitude are multifaceted.  Kurt, drawing on neuroscience research, contends that gratitude positively impacts our “physiology, biochemistry, brain waves, and nervous system”.   As you delve into the articles and research on gratitude, you can gain an appreciation of the awesome power of gratitude.   Gratitude has the power to enrich your life because it:

  • Develops resilience
  • Opens up possibilities and abundance
  • Creates true freedom from the “wants” and the “need to have”
  • Makes you more fully in the present moment – what do I have now?
  • Generates positive energy for yourself and those around you
  • Diffuses toxic emotions such as envy, resentment and greed
  • Strengthens relationships through appreciation and trust
  • Makes you more open and receptive to change in your life (including what appears to be adverse changes)
  • Enables you to access your inner resources and creativity (because you are not blinded by challenging emotions or distorted perceptions)
  • Helps overcome boredom, difficulties, complaining & feeling overwhelmed
  • Develops feelings of joy and happiness (link to TED talk with over 8.8 millions views)
  • Strengthens our sense of connection to everybody and everything (including our planet).

Accessing the power of gratitude

There are many pathways to gratitude and the associated feelings of happiness and joy.  We have only to set the intention to develop a gratitude mindset and then sustain one or two practices over a period of about three months.  The practices can be quite simple such as a few minutes spent daily in the morning to think about what we are grateful for or an end-of-the day review that reflects on what was good in our life.   Leo Babauta, creator of Zen Habits, suggests that the holiday season is a “time for gratitude” and offers multiple ways to express appreciation.

Journalling is a key activity for developing a gratitude mindset.  This can be done daily, weekly or at irregular intervals.  Like all habits, frequency builds competence.  There are many readily accessible resources and guides for gratitude journalling online.  Rick Hansen, for example, suggests the daily habit of journalling a response to three questions, “someone I’m grateful for?”, “something I’m grateful for?” and “an event I’m grateful for?”.   Mindful.org provides an illustrated Mindful Gratitude Journal including illustrations, 15 gratitude meditations, the science of gratitude, stimulus stories and ideas and ample space for recording your own thoughts.  Mindful also offers a 12-minute meditation podcast on cultivating gratitude for small things.

For many people, nature and music provide the stimulus for gratitude as they can inspire wonder and awe.  Louie Schwartzberg, time-lapse photographer and cinematographer, has developed a stunning video, Gratitude Revealed, which brings together nature imagery, music composition by Lisbeth Scott and commentary by some of the world’s leaders in gratitude and mindfulness, including Brother David Steindl-Rast.  Brother David is the author of Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: An Approach to Life in Fulness.

Reflection

The current period of Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday, reminds us that gratitude and generosity go hand-in-hand.  These celebratory days encourage us to express our gratitude by sharing our good fortune with others. 

As we grow in mindfulness, we gain increasing awareness of what we could be grateful for – nature, the people in our lives (past and present), the opportunities we are afforded, the things we possess and the access we have been given to a multitude of things that bring joy (such as music, sport, art and technology).  We are also motivated to express our gratitude and appreciation in all areas of our life.  Gratitude journalling in its many forms is a mindfulness practice that can help us develop a gratitude mindset – a sure path to happiness, positive mental health and creative endeavor.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

Change Your Perspective and Change Your Life

Foundational to Hugh Van Cuylenburg’ Resilience Project is a change in perspective and in his book on the topic he provides evidence of people who have turned their lives around through a change in their perspective.  He urges us strongly to focus on what we have, not what we lack.  He maintains that this change develops the positive emotions of appreciation and gratitude that replace the negative emotions of envy and resentment.  He points out too that it replaces depression about the past and/or anxiety about the future with the capacity to live the present moment more fully.

Underpinning the gratitude perspective is a change in our point of reference – from comparing ourselves to those who have more, to making the comparison with others who have considerably less.  His story of the Indian boy, Stanzin, highlights the impact of this different way of looking at things.   Stanzin was one of the most destitute children he met in India but the happiest person he had ever met – he appreciated everything in his life (no matter how old, broken, or impoverished). 

Hugh worked with elite sportspeople including NRL and ARL football players.  He mentions that at least five elite athletes changed their lives dramatically by implementing a daily gratitude journal – going from suicidal thoughts to appreciating the richness of their lives.

From loss and failure to learning and understanding

Hugh suggests that loss and failure can be seen in a very different light if we change our perspective.  If we view them as opportunities and lessons to be learned and realise that they are often the result of our own unmet expectations, we can move away from depression and anxiety to understanding and valuing the experience.  In each of life’s experiences, there is something to learn.  If we always experience “success” we can harbour false assumptions about what “made” our success, not realising our underlying deficiencies (often propped up by others).

Associated with this change in perspective is moving from self-absorption and self-congratulation to acknowledging the very rich contribution of the many people who have had a positive influence on our life (including our parents who provided our “gene pool”).  This latter thought came to me this morning when I was making an entry in my gratitude journal.  I was able to write, “I appreciate my genetic legacy from my father – athleticism, resilience and stamina, and from my mother – kindness, compassion, understanding and patience.”

It also means moving away from the perspective of “better than” to realistically appreciating our strengths and limitations – a change in perspective from “superior conceit” to a “healthy confidence”.  This change can result in improved behaviour together with happiness and contentment.

From “clients” to “friends”

Hugh mentions that at some stage in introducing students, elite sportspeople, and businesspeople to his GEM pathway, he started to view them as “friends”, instead of “clients” who paid for his services.  He viewed his role as helping people and building relationships, not engaging in a money-making venture.  This made the experience richer for himself and others he interacted with.  He gained many friends and was better able to help them as a result.  It also meant that sometimes he offered his services for free to people or organisations that had limited resources.

From “outcomes” to “process”

Both Louie Schwartzberg and Lindsey Stirling, award-winning creative producers of film and music, stress the importance of focusing on the process, not the final outcomes.  This involves enjoying the moment and fully experiencing making film or making music or engaging in any other creative endeavour.  In our organisational consulting work, my colleague and I have moved from a focus on outcomes to designing a process that enables people to “have the conversations that they need to have”.  This reduces the stress of process design because there are so many factors that influence the outcomes over which you have no control – what you can control is how well you design the intervention process.  This shift in perspective from outcomes to process provides the freedom to explore innovative and creative ways to work with people, music, or photography.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more aware of the perspectives and expectations that create our self-sabotaging behaviours and limit our options.  Changing our perspectives can significantly change our lives for the better, increase our happiness and strengthen our resilience in the face of setbacks and failures. Perspective change can open the way for the exploration of creative options in all our endeavours – family, work, and sport.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness and Self-Sabotage through Social Media

Hugh Van Cuylenburg has developed the GEM pathway to happiness which entails three core elements – gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness.   In his book, The Resilience Project, he describes the origins of his approach, the impact of practising GEM and its effectiveness in helping people to move from depression about the past or anxiety about the future.  He has found that his approach has been effective for school children, elite sportspeople, and businesspeople in small and large organisations.  At the heart of his approach, is the tenet that happiness lies in “being” and appreciating what we have, not in “having” and resenting what we do not have.  Hugh gives concrete examples of where practising the simple process of a gratitude journal has enabled people to overcome suicidal thoughts and find happiness in their life, their relationships, their business accomplishments and/or their sporting endeavours.

Developing mindfulness practices

Hugh described how his school children in India looked forward to their daily 30-minute meditation each morning at school.  In Australia, he had his students take a mindful walk around an oval before school started and observe and record “five things they heard, saw and felt” on their walks each day.  He basically encouraged them to pay attention to their senses so that they could live their day more fully, with increased awareness.  Hugh highlighted the studies that demonstrate the positive impact of mindfulness practices (e.g., meditation, body scan, mindful breathing) on adolescent stress, depression, and anxiety.  These impacts have explained the global development of mindfulness in schools, including the MindUP Program developed by Goldie Hawn and her foundation.

I have written earlier about the benefits of mindfulness meditation for adults, including the development of wisdom, calmness, clarity, and self-awareness.  Mindfulness practices can also help to “mind  your brain”, an otherwise neglected resource.  The challenge is to find a way to practise mindfulness daily in whatever form suits us personally.  Regularity, repetition, and practice build capability, provide constant positive reinforcement, and develop “unconscious competence”.  Hugh demonstrated through his real-life stories how we become what we focus on – the simple act of a daily gratitude journal leads to gratitude-in-the moment; practising loving-kindness meditation develops kindness and compassionate action; and regular reflection-on-action enables the capacity for reflection-in-action.

Self-sabotage in the pursuit of mindfulness

Despite our best intentions in practising mindfulness, we can easily sabotage our own efforts.  Self-sabotage can take many forms, including obsession with the news, overuse of our mobile phones or addiction to social media.  We can grab for our phones when we are waiting for something or someone, instead of using the opportunity to develop awareness. 

Hugh warns about the negative impacts of social media and its harmful effects on our minds.  He explains how social media giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter use “persuasive technologies” to distract us and capture our attention – because “eyes-on-a-page” readily translates to revenue dollars through advertising.  Your likes and dislikes are tracked continuously so that you can be fed advertisements for what you most likely desire and are willing to buy.  The benefits of any particular product or service are embellished – you do not buy a car, you buy “envy”, “status”, “luxury” or “visibility”.  

Hugh points out that social media and constant, easy access via mobile phones have become integral to the “attention economy” that feeds off our tendency for distractedness – distraction from ourselves, our pressures. and relationships.  Disruptive marketing through “pop-ups” and “behavioural retargeting” are designed to pull your attention away to what social media advertisers want you to pay attention to.  By engaging endlessly in consuming social media, we are self-sabotaging our mindfulness – our capacity to pay attention on purpose in the present moment with wonder and awe and an openness to what is real and meaningful in our life.

Hugh recommends several strategies to reclaim “what the attention economy has taken from you”:

  • Delete Facebook from your phones
  • Turn off notifications on your phones
  • Rearrange your home screen to display what you want to focus on and delete what you are unhealthily addicted to
  • Leave home without your phone (at least occasionally when it is not necessary to have it with you).

Our level of resistance to any or all of these recommendations reflects our level of capture by the psychological manipulation of the attention economy.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can access a wide array of benefits that enable us to live more  happily and aware.  However, if we obsess over the news or social media and become captured by our mobile phones, we will sabotage our efforts to mind our brains, build emotional resilience and achieve tranquility and ease.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Pathway to Resilience and Happiness

Hugh Van Cuylenburg has written a life-changing book which Missy Higgins describes as “hilarious, inspiring and heartbreakingly vulnerable”.   Hugh is a great storyteller and his stories, provided both verbally and in writing, have changed the lives of thousands of people, from school children to elite sportspeople.  His book, The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness through Gratitude, Empathy & Mindfulness, provides a very clear pathway to resilience and happiness.  It is admirably digestible and eminently practical – which partly explains its amazing influence on so many lives.

Hugh summarises his pathway in the mnemonic, GEM, and the three powerful words that these letters represent – Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness.  He developed his approach while in India working as a volunteer teacher in an incredibly poor village – where children often could not go to school, had no shoes, little food and no electricity or sanitation.  He could not work out why the children at the school were so unbelievably happy despite their destitute conditions.  He found the answer by observing the children and their practices closely and discovered that their resilience and happiness had its foundation in gratitude (appreciating what they do have), empathy (showing care and concern for others) and mindfulness (being mindful and developing this through meditation).

His message has been taken up not only by schools throughout Australia but also by elite sporting clubs such as the NRL team, Melbourne Storm and the AFL team, Collingwood.  He tells the story, for example, of a Collingwood player who wrote a three-letter word on his wrist to remind himself during a game of the things that he is grateful for so that he could push aside negative thoughts and anxiety that arise when engaged in a highly competitive match.   

Hugh’s pathway to happiness and resilience applies to each of us in our everyday life.  The three elements of his approach are not new – we have covered many aspects of these in this blog as the result of the work of many other people.  What Hugh presents in simple, digestible language and illustrative stories, is a very clear pathway integrating the three GEM elements that can be practised daily and that are mutually reinforcing – just like exercising, appropriate nutrition and yoga/ Tai Chi are mutually reinforcing, with each of these elements building on, and assisting us to achieve, the others.

The GEM pathway to happiness and resilience

Hugh refined his approach when he completed a Master of Education by focusing all his study and assignments on the mental health and wellness of adolescents.  He was also able to learn about the neuroscience that underpinned his approach (he provides references to the scientific papers in his “Notes” at the end of the book).

What was a catalyst for Hugh’s passionate pursuit of the issue of resilience was his own traumatic experience as a teenager trying to cope with his younger sister’s anorexia nervosa.  At the time, he did not understand what was happening to her and why she behaved the way she did, and did not show empathy for her plight.  He failed to realise that she was mentally ill, not just suffering a physical malady, malnutrition, that could be overcome just by eating more.  He became acutely aware as an adult of the “concentric circles of suffering” (for siblings, parents, friends, and teachers) that mental illness can create.  

I will discuss each of the elements of GEM below:

Gratitude – Hugh suggests that this means appreciating what we have rather than focusing on what we lack.  He tells the story of Stanzin, one of his students in India, who despite his impoverished circumstances was grateful for everything in his life – his gratitude was pervasive and continuous.  Stanzin often pointed out to Hugh things that he was grateful for – his friends, being able to go to school, having shoes to wear and even receiving a plain bowl of rice for lunch. He was incredibly grateful for his rusted, broken-down play equipment (such as a swing) – something that in our Western society would initiate a complaint.  Stanzin focused on what he had, not what he did not possess – avoiding negative emotions of discontent, resentment, or anger, and developing a positive mindset. 

Hugh recommends a daily gratitude journal as a way to build resilience and happiness.  This is a recommendation and practice of many people.  In the previous post, I spoke of the twice-daily practice of gratitude journalling of Lindsey Stirling, the hugely successful songwriter, violinist, and dancer.  Gwen Cherne, the first Commissioner for Veteran Family Advocacy, who agitates for veterans and their families battling mental stress, stated that she writes a gratitude journal every night (her story is featured in the Weekend Australian Magazine, March 6-7, 2021, pp.13-16).   Hugh, Lindsey, and Gwen have each experienced considerable trauma in their lives and each has shown the resilience to be able to “bounce back” and experience happiness in pursuing their life purpose in contributing to the welfare and joy of others.

Empathy – being able to feel for others by consciously thinking about what they might be experiencing intellectually and emotionally.  Hugh points to the neuroscience that reinforces the fact that practising empathy develops kindness and motivates compassionate action.  Simon Sinek suggests that in a work situation an empathetic leader is “more concerned about the human being not their output”.  The young boy Stanzin, who made a lasting impression on Hugh, was continuously empathetic – going out of his way to help others in need, e.g., sitting with children who were alone during the lunch hour.  Hugh recalled that in contrast, he himself was not empathetic to his young sister as a teenager and was not able understand her suffering and feel with and for her.  A key component of empathy is deep listening – openness to other’s stories and their perspectives.

Mindfulness – being present in the moment while adopting an open, curious, accepting, and non-judgmental attitude.  Hugh learned through his experience in India that practising mindfulness through meditation was a way of “taking greater control of your mind and, therefore, of your life”.  The children in the village school where he taught began each day with a 30-minute meditation,  At first, he was sceptical about the practice but soon found that he could focus so much more on the present moment, and not become absorbed by anxiety about the future or depression about the past.  He found that Stanzin was a living example of the benefits of mindfulness meditation.  The young boy would be constantly mindful of what where the positive things in his village life.  Mindfulness develops both gratitude and empathy.  

Developing the GEM pathway to happiness and resilience

In his book, The Resilience Project, Hugh provides a section at the back where he offers some exercises that can help us to develop gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness – some of which he has used in schools throughout Australia.  The Coles Group have implemented a range of practices drawn from The Resilience Project. 

Simon Sinek suggests that a simple way to practise empathy in everyday life is to let the person into traffic ahead of you if they are stuck in a side street or are attempting to cut in front of you.  He argues that you never know why they are trying to enter the traffic or are in a hurry to get somewhere.  They could, for example, be dealing with an emergency – a sick parent/child, an accident at home, someone dying in hospital, or anxiety about a child stranded at night at a lonely, dark railway station. 

Reflection

Taken together the elements of the GEM pathway can lead to happiness and resilience.  The stories Hugh tells, and the research he draws on, reinforce the benefits of his approach.  The widespread adoption of the principles of The Resilience Project attests to its effectiveness. 

Hugh also stresses the importance of connection and has exercises that can help us renew our connections given that they have been eroded through social media and the distancing created by the pandemic.  He stresses that practising GEM is even more urgent in these challenging times.  He maintains too that we must go beyond connection itself and take wise and compassionate action to redress the suffering and pain of others, e.g., asking “R U OK?”

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and practising gratitude and empathy, we can develop self-awareness, self-regulation and compassionate action and gain increasing insight into our life purpose. As Hugh observes, every challenge is an opportunity to realise our potential and our capacity to contribute positively to the lives of others.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Thanksgiving: A Time to Revitalise our Gratitude Practices

The US celebrated Thanksgiving on Thursday 26 November this year.  It was also formally celebrated in other places around the world while in Australia informal celebrations occurred as American organisations shared their Thanksgiving Day exhortations and practices.  This was followed by intensive sales campaigns under the banners of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  It is easy to lose sight of the message of Thanksgiving in the flurry and frenzy of the constant encouragement to buy and acquire.   Acquisition is suddenly valued more than appreciation.

The value of gratitude

Gratitude is important for our relationships and our mental health.  Expressing appreciation to another person in a relationship is a way of valuing them and what they say and do.  It builds trust and affection and overcomes the tendency to “take someone for granted” which is, certainly, an intimacy dampener.

Neuroscience has demonstrated the benefits that gratitude has for our mental health and overall well-being.  It can alleviate depression, replace toxic emotions such as anger, envy, and resentment and develop a positive attitude to life which is, in itself, conducive to mental health.  Karen Newell, for example, explains from her research how gratitude builds positive energy.  She encourages us to be grateful not only for things that are present in our life today but also for the experiences and people from our past, especially our parents and mentors.

Sustaining gratitude practices

There are numerous ways to express gratitude and appreciation.  The challenge, like all good habits, is to build gratitude practices into our daily life, however brief or informal.  Some people adopt a gratitude journal as a way to express appreciation and progressively build a deep and abiding sense of gratitude.  Others link expressions of appreciation to other activities undertaken during the day.  For example, when boiling the jug, you could express appreciation for access to fresh water (something that many people in the world do not have) or the food that you are about to eat.  While waiting during the day, you could choose to reflect on what you are grateful for rather than dive for your phone.

Gratitude meditation is a sound way to progressively build awareness and appreciation for everything that enriches our life on a day to day basis.  We can learn to savour our relationships, achievements, the development of our children, the skills and capacities that we have developed over time and life itself.  Developing a gratitude mindset can help us to experience joy in our life, not only for what we have received, but also for the achievement of others through empathetic joy.  Being grateful is a great motivator for taking compassionate action, which not only benefits others but also ourselves.

Reflection

The benefits of gratitude and appreciation are numerous and can positively impact many aspects of our life if only we can slow down for gratitude.   We have to learn to create space in our busy lives for stillness and silence so that we can grow in awareness of what we have to appreciate and continue to express our gratitude whether internally or through external communication.   Gratitude can improve the quality of our life and, at the same time, positively impact those around us.  As we grow in mindfulness through our gratitude practices, reflection and meditation, we can experience greater joy in our lives, enrich our relationships and make a real difference in our world – a world torn by envy, hatred, resentment, bias and discrimination and the great divide between the “have’s” and “have-not’s”.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

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Discipline Creates Freedom and Success

Koya Webb, in her recent presentation at the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, spoke passionately about how discipline creates freedom and success.  She made the point that discipline underpinned her success as a college track star and more recently as a celebrated holistic health healer and yoga instructor.   Koya sustained two serious injuries that shattered her dream of becoming an Olympic track and field competitor.  It was a breathing meditation incorporated in yoga practice that enabled her to recover from the dark hole of depression after her injury and go on to establish a highly successful career as a globally recognised yoga teacher.  Koya has recently published her book, Let Your Fears Make You Fierce.

Koya maintained that discipline incorporating mindfulness practices leads to freedom because it releases you from negative self-talk and fear that depletes your energy and power and enables you to create the life you want and to make a difference in the world.  She recommends a daily routine incorporating mindfulness practices in the morning and at lunch time.  Koya suggests starting your morning practice before you become lost in, and stressed by, your email, text messages or your news channel.  I have found this approach essential to sustain my daily practice of researching and writing this blog.  Koya’s suggestion concerning a lunch-time daily practice is designed to break down the accumulated stress of the morning.

A daily routine of mindfulness practices

Koya described her daily routine that incorporated several mindfulness practices.  Her recommendation is to develop your own rituals to create a daily routine that suits your preferences but engages your body and mind to reinforce your mind-body connection and tap into your life force.  Some of the elements that make up Koya’s routine are as follows:

  • Breathing meditation – Koya begins each day with several breathing meditations, some involving slow, deep breathing, while others require quick, sharp exhalations.  These breathing exercises clear away fear and anxiety if you envision the outbreath releasing you from their hold.  The in-breath is envisaged as drawing in energy and power.
  • Movement – yoga is Koya’s preferred choice of movement; other people may prefer Tai Chi or similar meditation-in-motion practice.  Her YouTube© channel provides videos offering training in several yoga poses for different levels of practitioners, along with inspirational videos on holistic health practices.
  • Connect to nature – there are numerous ways to connect to nature and enjoy its energising and healing benefits.  For example, you can be mindful of the breeze, cloud formations, the movement of birds and butterflies and the sight of rivers, oceans or mountains. 
  • Visualisation – the focus here is to visualise a positive, ideal future to replace negative perceptions about the past or present or a fearful future.
  • Writing a gratitude journal – gratitude has numerous healing benefits and serves to replace fear with hope, envy with appreciation and apathy with energy.  It also blocks out negative self-evaluations and diminishing judgments about self-worth.  Writing itself reinforces and deepens insight, leading to growth and development.

Koya maintains that the discipline of a daily routine incorporating mindfulness practices enables you to set up your day so that it works for you, not against you.  She argues that if you establish a daily ritual for your mindfulness practice you will “put yourself in a higher state of vibration”, your energy will flow more fully, freed from the blockages of fear and anxiety.

Reflection

The discipline of daily practice is difficult, but the rewards are great.  It requires forgoing some things and making space in our lives to enrich it in a holistic way.  As we grow in mindfulness through these diverse mindfulness practices and the discipline of a daily ritual, we can restore our energy and motivation and experience freedom and success.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Ways to Develop Gratitude

In a previous post I offered a specific gratitude meditation presented by Diana Winston through the MARC weekly meditation podcasts.  I also mentioned the practice of developing personal reminders to appreciate some aspect of your life – I mentioned in my case using mistakes in tennis (of which there are many) to savour the capacity to run, hit the ball and engage in social activity with friends.  Here I would like to discuss different forms of meditation and mindfulness practices that can also assist in developing a deeper sense of gratitude that can increase our enjoyment of life and improve our relationships.

Gratitude meditations and mindfulness practices

Some of these meditations or practices can become part of your daily life or employed on a one-off basis.  The important thing is to incorporate some form of gratitude practice on a regular basis because as Jon Kabat-Zin reminds us, “we become what we pay attention to”. So, focusing on gratitude makes us grateful.  Here are some relevant meditations/practices:

  • Loving-kindness meditation – this form of meditation can enable us to appreciate ourselves as we are (rather than wishing we were different) and the people who positively impact our lives.  Jon Kabat-Zin provides an all-embracing loving-kindness meditation that extends also to people who may have hurt us and to whoever in the world is in need.   Expressing kindness to others engenders appreciation for what we have.
  • Journalling – there are many forms of gratitude journal that can be used as part of your mindfulness practice.  Jason Marsh provides some sound, research-based tips for keeping a gratitude journal – including the benefit of regular, rather daily gratitude journalling.  Ryder Carroll in his Bullet Journal Method (pp. 185-187) identifies ways to incorporate gratitude in his approach to journalling.  Rick Hanson suggests that a gratitude journal can focus on three simple aspects of your life – things that I am grateful for, people that I appreciate and events that I value.  Our journalling can also cover the people in our lives who have imparted their knowledge and experience as mentors, guides, parents, carers or coaches – in Aboriginal terms, it involves expressing appreciation for a Goondeen, a wise person who is a source of wisdom and understanding.
  • Sharing your gratitude – Tara Brach suggests engaging a gratitude buddy to support your practice of expressing gratitude.  She recommends developing the practice of regularly sharing your expressions of gratitude with one other person, e.g. by email or text.  Your buddy can support your positive intentions through regular contact.
  • Appreciating the moment – Nicole Bayes-Fleming offers meditations for “resting in the flow” (19 minutes) and savouring the moment through your senses (5 minutes).  These gratitude practices help to displace harmful thoughts and to build appreciation for the simple things in life.  Chris Walsh encourages the practice of mindful check-in, particularly during transitions in life, as a way to tap into the benefits of being grateful (including cultivating resilience).
  • Developing sympathetic joy – this process replaces envy with valuing and rejoicing in the success of others.  Johann Hari describes a form of loving-kindness meditation that can develop sympathetic joy by savouring the achievements of others as well your own.
  • Somatic meditation – developing awareness of your body and bodily sensations.  There are various forms of somatic meditation, e.g. lower-belly breathing and body scan.  Somatic meditation has proven to be particularly powerful in developing gratitude in times of difficulty.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become aware of the many people and things in our life that we can be grateful for.  Focusing regularly on these positive aspects of our daily life can displace negative thoughts and engender the many proven benefits of gratitude. 

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

The Benefits of Gratitude

Increasingly research into gratitude has highlighted the benefits of being grateful and expressing that feeling through thought, writing or action.

Neuroscientist, Glenn Fox, in his article, “What the brain reveals about gratitude“, argues that scientific studies have established that expressing gratitude can improve your health, your relationships and your overall happiness.  He also asserts that recent research demonstrates that gratitude alleviates depression.

In support of this view, Joel Wong and Joshua Brown established through their research that gratitude practice helps people who experience mental health issues as well as people who are mentally healthy.  They postulate that practising gratitude displaces “toxic emotions” such as anger and resentment through the cultivation of positive emotions such as appreciation.

Wong & Brown, drawing on their research, demonstrate that just the act of expressing gratitude has substantial personal benefits and that sharing the expression of gratitude is not essential to realise these benefits.  Their research entailed a control group of participants writing “gratitude letters”.  They established that the benefits of being grateful grow over time and that there are sustained, positive effects on the brain, including “greater neural sensitivity in the prefrontal cortex” which leads to improved mental health over time.

They comment insightfully:

Much of our time and energy is spent pursuing things that we currently don’t have.  Gratitude reverses our priorities to help us appreciate the people and things that we do have.

Robert Emmons in his ground-breaking article, “Why gratitude is good“, shares the results of research undertaken with his colleagues and lists the demonstrated physical, psychological and social benefits of gratitude.  He asserts that gratitude entails more than appreciating what is good in our life – it also involves acknowledging the people who have enabled that “goodness”.  This entails recognising that the source of what we experience as good is often someone outside of ourselves.

The researchers designing these research studies often had participants produce a gratitude journal – recording on a regular basis the things that they are grateful for.  We can generate the positive energy of gratitude by reflecting on what is good in our past life or in the present.

As we grow in mindfulness through gratitude meditation, we train our brain to recognise what is good in our life, to appreciate the contribution of others to our happiness and mental health and to express that gratitude often and spontaneously. Through this state of positivity, we are better able to handle the challenges and stresses in our life.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

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Being Grateful

In the previous post, I discussed how savoring the moment and the experience of pleasantness nurtures the seeds of happiness.  This savoring of the many things in our life that generate positive feelings, leads naturally to a sense of gratitude.

Being grateful

Rachel Naomi Remen who suffered unbelievably from Crohn’s disease learned how her inner strength grew with appreciating the many things in her life that she took for granted.  Rachel writes in her best-selling book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, that appreciating the small things in life can make us strong enough to deal with the big things, such as cancer and chronic illness.  She encourages us to be grateful for “the grace of a hot cup of coffee, the presence of a friend, the blessing of having a new cake or soap or an hour without pain”.

These small things are so much a part of our daily life that we overlook them until we lose them.  The same applies to our health which we so often take for granted.  Tara Brach urges us to go beyond the “to-do list”, focused on doing things, to creating a “to-be list” that focuses on being.  Whether we call it “soul” or “life force” or “consciousness”, our inner resources develop as we nourish the sense of gratitude for what is a normal part of our daily life.

Cultivating gratitude

Tara suggests a number of ways to cultivate gratitude including engaging a “gratitude buddy” (who you email every day with your gratitude list), savoring moments of pleasantness, developing a gratitude journal and/or regularly undertaking a gratitude meditation.   As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, “we become what we pay attention to” – we become grateful by paying attention to the things that we are grateful for.

Gratitude enables us to deal with the challenges of daily life that would otherwise disturb our tranquility and calmness.  It opens us up  to appreciating and serving others through empathy and compassion.

As we grow in mindfulness, we become much more aware of what we value in our life, develop gratitude and build our inner resources and resilience.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of dh_creative on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Happiness through Mindfulness

It seems very apt to be writing about happiness on New Year’s Day in Venice after enjoying the fireworks over the Canal Grande at midnight, surrounded by hundreds of happy people welcoming in the new year.

The happiness I am talking about here, though, is not a state precipitated by an event, occasion or the sight of fireworks.

I am talking about a state of mind that is felt at a person’s core.  It is so deep that it is not unsettled by troubled waters that are stirred up by disappointments, loss or unrealised expectations.

It is resilient in the face of life’s challenges and rises above them.  It does not cease to exist when circumstances change – it is persistent and constant.

In contrast, happiness that is only occasioned by an event can be lost when the event is over and people are no longer surrounded by the company of conviviality.  This shallower kind of happiness is vulnerable to envy, depression and boredom from the banality of a routine life.

In the sobering moments of New Year’s Day, some people may realise that their life lacks real meaning or purpose. They will go through the routine of formulating resolutions to be broken, instead of developing new habits that will provide a deep sense of happiness and joy – habits such as daily mindful practice.

Goldie Hawn spoke of her abiding happiness and joy experienced through mindfulness and her desire to share this with educators and children. Her life is full of meaning and purpose.

To grow in mindfulness and achieve the attendant calm, clarity and abiding happiness requires practice and persistence – it does not come with an occasional mindful moment.

Regular mindful practice in a way that suits you and your lifestyle will increase your mindful moments and extend to other mindful practices, e.g .you might start with mindful breathing which could lead to mindful eating and/or walking.  One mindful practice can grow out of another – and the growth can be exponential if you persist.

One mindful practice that contributes a deep sense of happiness is developing a gratitude journal or regularly expressing gratitude for who you are, what you have in life, the talents you have or the opportunities that you are given.  It extends to being grateful for your friends, family and positive colleagues and associates.

You can explicitly provide positive feedback to anyone who has provided a service to you or shown you kindness.  Developing an attitude of gratitude contributes to a state of happiness that is impervious to envy – the source of a lot of unhappiness in the world.

A deep sense of happiness is within reach as you grow in mindfulness through regular mindful practice, whatever form this takes.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of jill111 on Pixabay