Tag Archives: greater good

Saturday Short – Gratitude and the Brain – and a Musical Assist by Benjamin William Hastings

Photo Credit: Twitter

Adapted from the Archives

Have you noticed the increased expressions of gratitude on your social media? At least in the US, we are winding down from Thanksgiving Day festivities. Some of us take this occasion as an opportunity, through the month of November, to daily and publicly express our gratitude. Based on what we know from research, this could make this time of the year one of our happiest and least stressful of the year.

Below you’ll find quotes from some of these authors, reporting on both clinical research and anecdotal data that support how the practice of gratitude can actually alter our habits of thinking and our sense of well-being. It’s all good for us and those around us.

“Our brain is always on alert to threat and is more predisposed to look at the negative side of life [stress response]. There are many things that happen to us everyday that are positive but we don’t notice them because we are always looking for the next threat to us. Now these actions are below our level of awareness. It takes some concerted effort to get our brain to move to the positive side of life. And that is where paying attention and expressing gratitude plays a role in establishing that positive mindset. When we start to place attention on the positive events in our life our brain responds by producing the neurotransmitter dopamine…We do feel better when dopamine is flowing but that also makes are brain want more – so it becomes the motivating neurotransmitter also…In addition, the brain loves confirmation bias: it looks for things that prove what it already believes to be true. Dopamine then strengthens that action. So if you start seeing things in your life that you are grateful for, your brain will start looking for more things to be grateful for.Patricia Faust, How Gratitude Affects the Brain

Photo Credit: UsefulGen

Six Habits of Highly Grateful People:

  1. Once in awhile, they think about death and loss. – As we think of past losses and future losses (say of those we love), we remember and reflect on the good we’ve known in those situations or relationships. Of future losses, we then take action to savor and bless those persons while we have them near.
  2. They take time to smell the roses. – Whether our current situation feels difficult or just mundane, we look for the beauty.
  3. They take the good things as gifts, not birthrights. – We see entitlement for the life-diminishing thing it is.
  4. They’re grateful to people, not just things. – We can be thankful for great food, for blue skies, for warm clothing, but we go beyond that to the one(s) who provided the good we have.
  5. They mention the pancakes. Being grateful for the specific little things disciplines us to enlarge our gratitude for the greater things in our lives. Those things that can cause stress if we don’t remember the value and significance in them.
  6. They thank outside the box. Even in adversity or hard times, we can find things for which to be grateful. Gratefulness doesn’t minimize the difficulty; it actually strengthens us to endure.

Six Habits of Highly Grateful People – Jeremy Adam Smith

Photo Credit: Animalia-Life

“Given its magnetic appeal, it is a wonder that gratitude might be rejected. Yet it is. If we fail to choose it, by default we choose ingratitude. Millions make this choice every day.

Why? Provision, whether supernatural or natural, becomes so commonplace that it is easily accepted for granted.  We believe the universe owes us a living. We do not want to be beholden. Losing sight of protection, favors, benefits and blessings renders a person spiritually and morally bankrupt.  It’d be hard to improve upon the words of our 16th President in 1863:

‘We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation ever has grown; but we have forgotten God! We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.’” – What Gets in the Way of Gratitude? – Robert Emmons

Photo Credit: HPRC

8 Ways to Express Your Gratitude

  1. Keep a gratitude journal.
  2. Write a gratitude letter to a past mentor or teacher.
  3. Count how many things you can find to be grateful for in each room of your home.
  4. Listen to a guided gratitude meditation [my suggestion if you don’t prefer guided meditation: spend some time in the Psalms].
  5. Start business meetings with a “what went well” one-sentence reflection.
  6. Savor receiving thanks.
  7. Take a daily photo of something you are grateful for and post to Instagram or Facebook, tagging it with #365project.
  8. Try a gratitude jar or tree.  – Tamara Lechner, The Neuroscience Behind Gratitude: How Does Cultivating Appreciation Affect Your Brain?

So…what are you grateful for at this moment?

And for me? More than I can count…including these two songs:

How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain – Joshua Brown, Joel Wong

How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times – Robert Emmons

Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy – Nancy Leigh DeMoss

The Science of Gratitude – a White Paper – UC Berkeley

Photo Credit: Robert Emmons, Greater Good, Daily Good
Photo Credit: Marilyn Comrie – Facebook

Monday Morning Moment – Choosing Hope, Choosing Joy…Living in the “Perhaps”

Photo Credit: Heartlight, Ben Patterson

Do you ever find yourself having to push down that sense of panic, doom, or dread? It pops up not just in our thoughts but wherever we bodily lodge our stress – in our throat, gut, back, wherever.

We in the US are several months away from our every-four-year presidential election, and yet we are forced to think about it, and puzzle over what a bloodbath it will be (not literally but experientially with one side driven to shred the character of the other).

How are good decisions made in such a government and culture? I actually ponder this way too often.

My own preference is to bring everyone possible to the table (for sure a sampling of those affected by the decision) and reason together (ancient wisdom, right?). My personal sensibilities cry out, “Why can’t we all get along?!”

Monday Morning Moment – Spend a Minute with Pollyanna and the Contrarian – There’s a Place for Each of Us – Deb Mills Writer

One issue always before us as a nation and as neighbors is what to do with and how to serve marginalized, displaced people? I’m not really addressing this today, but don’t you feel for Texas? I’m part of a refugee resettlement team (with my church), and it is a stretch for us to serve well one family (sometimes others peripherally). Then there is the occasional person in need who finds us online and asks for help. Just this week, it was a mom with three small children who separated herself from an abusive partner and now she is faced with the dire circumstances of inadequate resources to care for her family.

This is just a microcosm of what is going on in our nation serving the needy in a sustainable way.

So how do I choose hope?

Just this morning, I was reminded of a historical account in the Bible (Torah). It tells of a time when Jews were essentially captives in Persia. During this time, a young Jewish woman named Esther actually became the queen of King Ahasuerus. An evil aide to the king plotted to rid the kingdom of the Jews and tricked the king into a decision that would lead to their destruction. Esther’s cousin and guardian, Mordecai, counseled with her to appeal to the king, for the sake of the Jews.

“If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.”Esther 4:14

Mordecai’s words ring out with hope, even in the midst of danger. If Esther decided not to speak to the king (which could lead to her own death sooner than later), Mordecai trusted God to deliver His people another way. However, “for such a time as this”, Esther did risk everything, and the result was salvation for her people. That was a great “perhaps” that Jewish people, to this day, celebrate with joy.

When we choose hope, we choose to trust a power greater than ourselves. Sure, we can hope in the general goodness of humankind, or a particular political party, or some sort of karma, or a mystical future where everything somehow works out for good.

Hope and trust go together. I choose to hope in God and, with a long view, take joy in His goodness and power to redeem. To some, this may seem as silly as any other singular source of hope – our trust in any of the above to pull us from the brink. However, throughout history and in my own day-to-day, I find God infinitely trustworthy.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ‘For in Him we live and move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’Acts 17:24 -28

Perhaps is becoming a favorite word of mine. We can’t presume to know how elections will turn out. Or what are the best processes for caring for marginalized and displaced peoples. Nor can we presume on God to bless our partisan preferences just because we feel more comfortable with a certain status quo.

However, we can seek to be wise and loving, and hope in the sovereign movement of God through the ages. We can take our place in history to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God and one another. Refusing to be silent, or isolated among those like us, or mired in doom and gloom should our culture continues to shift…which it will, one way or another.

We can hope and wonder at the “perhaps” we can’t see but imagine and act accordingly.

Photo Credit: Heartlight, John R. W. Stott

Then comes joy. Full-on. Trusting-a-good-God joy. Untainted by present circumstances. Deeper than happiness. Trusting in God and acting on what we know to be right and true…right now.

Postscript: Should you decide to take this course of action, choosing hope and joy, be prepared. It is counter-cultural. You will come under attack. Maybe you already know this experience. Not many minutes after posting this, I had a gut-punch of fear and anger. Ours is to recognize those attacks when they come at us and respond in ways that nurture hope and joy – guarding our hearts and minds, living quiet and productive lives, serving others, and fixing our eyes on the One who brings perfect peace.