Cultivating Gratitude

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Thankgiving weekend has passed, but the thankfulness continues.  Daily I have so much to be grateful for, even in things that at first would not seem a blessing.  For example, over the weekend our car broke down about an hour outside of Thames while my son Lukas was driving it.  And at first I freaked out: How would I get the car back to Thames? What was wrong and could it be fixed before we leave in 3 days for Borneo? How much would it cost to fix?  But as the mishap unfolded, I saw so much to be thankful for.  First and foremost, Lukas was safe, no one was hurt, he was with a friend who had family in the town.  Lukas was leaving Waihi and only 2 minutes outside The Karangahake Gorge.  If he had been on the Gorge Road, there would have been nowhere to pull over and it would have been very dangerous. But he wasn’t, he was in a quiet town on a quiet street when the car died.  His friend was able to get his uncle to tow the car to his house where it sat safely overnight. My friend, Rick knew a good mechanic in Waihi and I was able to get in to see them first thing in the morning.  The mechanic was great, diagnosed the problem quickly and fixed it in an hour. And what could have been a major engine repair ended up being a corroded fuse which cost $2.00 to replace. (There was labor and a couple of extras of course, but relatively very inexpensive.) And we leave in 3 days, and have to drive to the airport at 3 AM to catch an early morning flight, and it could have happened then! But it didn’t. Lukas is safe, the car is home, it’s running fine and all is well.  So much to be grateful for.

Gratitude is a great feeling! And it’s good for you too. So much new research explaining just how good it is for you on so many levels. There is a great website about the science of gratitude and the science of a meaningful life. It’s my new favorite website!   Greater Good, The Science of a Meaningful Life. Take the time to visit the site and look around, it is magnificent! It’s a project through UC Berkeley (Yay, my old Alma Mater) and it has so much great information and wonderful videos.  It is worth taking some time to look around.

You can also become involved in their Gratitude Journal Research Project - Thnx4:

Thnx4 is a sharable gratitude journal. Take the 14-day gratitude challenge, learn more about yourself, and add to the growing body of research on the benefits of saying thanks!

Keeping a Gratitude Journal is one of the “Ten Ways to Become More Grateful.” Read this article by Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. - the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology.

To close, I want to share one of the videos by Robert Emmons from The Greater Good Site, The Benefits of Gratitude.

The Benefits of Gratitude

Please share some of your recent Gratitude Stories, I always love to hear them.  And as always, thank you for stopping by, I appreciate it.

 

 

Happy Aging?

“When grace is joined with wrinkles it is adorable.
There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.”

- Victor Hugo

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Happy aging?  Isn’t that an oxymoron?!

I was at a birthday party this weekend, a nice group of people, good food and music. But often I’ve found that at birthday parties for people around 50, conversations start to gravitate toward aging.  Sigh.  People see people at the party that they haven’t seen in awhile, there are hugs and then often those embarrassing moments when one of the folks has to ask for a reminder of name and/or affiliation; after dances, people come off the dance floor complaining about aches and pains in knees and joints, and the consumption of too much alcohol is no longer quite as cute or funny.

When I got home from the party, I wanted to do a bit of homework about happiness and aging.  I’ve read quite a bit about older people being happy – but wanted some empiracle evidence.  The first thing we have to acknowledge is that we are all living longer, across the board.  And this is a good thing, right?  Well I want to think so, but I can’t help wondering what I’ll be like at 80 . . . hopefully wearing purple with a red hat that doesn’t match!

One of the things from the research that made a lot of sense to me was that as we grow older and we realize that we won’t live forever, we change our perspectives on life in positive ways; our goals change and we realize we don’t have all the time in the world, we see our priorities clearer, and we don’t worry as much about what constitutes trivial matters – essentially we don’t sweat the small stuff.

Basically it seems that older people are happier in themselves and with others because they choose to be.

Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, Laura Carstensen has researched this topic extensively.  In the following TED talk, she discusses happy aging, and pretty much empiracally proves that, on the whole, older people are happier!  Yay!  This is good news for those of us that are attending more and more birthday parties for people over 50!

 

I hope you take the time to watch Professor Carstensen, especially for those of you over 50! I found it uplifting and hopeful.

And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.

Dwelling on the Positive

“To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone..”

- Albert Einstein

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A woman whose blog I’ve been following, ForcingMyselfHappy, has a plan.  Her plan is:

“A commitment is to do one thing per day that is supposed to make me happier for 6 months and blog about it.”

I think it’s awesome that she has that commitment, so I made a commitment to help where I can.

I have a great list that reflects the core of Positive Psychology, from a book by Miriam Akhtar:

Savour the moment: Relish, cherish, marvel, bask in and feast on life’s good stuff to maximise your enjoyment of a positive experience and generate positive emotions.

Practise gratitude: The attitude of gratitude helps you to grow your awareness of the good things in life and overcome the brain’s negativity bias, which spots what’s wrong before it notices what’s right.

Cultivate positivity: Make a ‘playlist’ of fun, enjoyable activities to act as a memory jogger when you’re low. Positive emotions build your resilience and undo the effects of negativity.

Learn optimism: Pessimism puts you on the fast track to depression while optimism’s cognitive tools act as psychological self-defence.

Nurture your relationships: Depression can lead to you withdrawing from social contact but relationships are vital for your happiness, so prioritise time in the company of your loved ones.

Meditate: Mindfulness meditation develops the brain’s capacity for positive emotions and helps you to detach from negativity.

Discover your strengths: Depression saps energy, undermines your functioning and may highlight a lack of meaning in life. Your strengths act as energisers to support your recovery and provide a clue to a positive direction to take. (*Added note from me, you can take the Character  Strengths Test here.)

I truly believe that this is a life changing list!

And to close, here’s a little video clip from my home, New Zealand.  Short, Sweet and Happy!

 

Good Luck with The Plan.  I hope this list helps.

And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.

 

Understanding Happiness

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

- Aristotle

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In my post Lifelong Learning, I introduced a wonderful course offered on iTunes U called Understanding Happiness.  This course is actually a compilation of 7 different TED talks.  The first talk was the one I discussed in my previous post, Paying Attention to Happiness, in which Nancy Etcoff explores the Surprising Science of Happiness.

The second talk in this course is by the “father” of Positive Psychology, Martin Seligman.  His talk, On Positive Psychology, is informative and engaging and very well worth the 20 minutes of time for anyone even slightly interested in this field.  He gives the history, the science and the reasoning behind the field.   He points out three key points.  Positive Psychology is:

• As concerned with strengths as it is with weaknesses
• As interested in building the best as in repairing the worst
• As concerned with making the lives of normal people fulfilling and nurtuiring talent as with healing

Note, it does not say “just be happy.”  It does not say that it is not concerned with healing, just that it is just as concerned with nurturing the positive as it is with healing; it does not say ignore one’s weaknesses, it is just also concerned with finding strengths.  As I suggested in Moving Toward Authentic Self

In order to make changes in the present and not stay stuck, we have to look at the past and understand what led us to our current situation. We need to work through and move through our feelings of pain and loss in order to move on. Please understand I am absolutely and positively a believer in Positive Psychology and finding happiness.  But it must be Authentic Happiness.  And in my opinion Authentic Happiness can only be obtained when we have done our work and touched our Authentic Self.

For those of you interested in learning more and even taking a free test to assess your own level of Authentic Happiness, you can go to Authentic Happiness.

So for those of you that believe that Positive Psychology is the science of  just be happy and get on with it, I hope you will take the time to listen to Dr. Seligman’s informative and interesting talk linked below.  It goes a long way in helping us in Understanding Happiness.

Please let me know your thoughts Martin Seligman’s TED talk at iTunes U, and I’d love to hear about what you think about Positive Psychology.

And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.

Paying Attention to Happiness

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”

-  Chuck Palahniuk

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Hard to remember happiness . . . and hard to pay attention to happiness even when it is happening.  As I learned on iTunes U,  we are hard wired for happiness, we search for it everywhere as Cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff discusses. So why is it so hard to remember happiness and to be present for happiness as it occurs?

Etcoff tells us that research shows that we are happiest when we are “in flow” (absorbed in what we are doing) and when we are with other people, actively engaged (with loved ones; having sex with a partner; participating in a team activity.)

Through participation in an academic study, I have personally experienced Etcoff’s findings to be true.  I’m participating in a study at University of Canterbury, NZ in which the researcher checks in several times a day to find out what people are doing at that moment, with whom they are doing it and measuring how “pleasurable, meaningful, engaging the activity is and how happy the person is at that moment.  I got involved because I’m a member of NZ Association of Positive Psychology and I saw the researcher Carsten Grimm was looking for participants for his well-being study.  I’m doing it not only because I like to help out in the research of Positive Psych, but also because I relished the idea of someone checking in on me and my happiness.  What a wonderful reminder to be present and to pay attention!  Several times a day I am asked if I am truly engaged in whatever activity I am doing and if I am aware of my level of happiness.  What a gift!

 

 

Please let me know your thoughts Nancy Etcoff’s TED talk at iTunes U, and I’d love to hear about how you pay attention to happiness.

And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.

 

 

 

 

 

How much is enough?

“Materialism can negatively influence well-being.”

- Ed Diener and Martin Seligman

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We often get lost in the Myth of More - believing that “more” will make us happier – more clothes, more wine, more food, more money, more stuff!

In my post Finding Joy,  Michael Norton describes that people believe that the prospect of possessing things will make them happy.

http://patticlark.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/finding-joy/

But Diener and Seligman, leaders in Positive Psychology argue that from an economic point of view, materialism can actually negatively influence well-being.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/10/14/why-money-doesn-t-buy-happiness.html

And even when a business magazine  The Business Insider explored what will make you happy, more stuff was not on the list:

http://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-make-you-happier-2011-1#

So how much is enough?  In many articles, including this one on Zen Habits, it is argued that we already have enough now.

http://zenhabits.net/key-question-how-much-is-enough/

So instead of more stuff, most psychologists and even some economists are suggesting a change in attitude.

This wonderful video illustrates our rediculous attraction to more stuff and the damage it is doing to us and to our planet.

It is appropriately called The Story of Stuff.

 

Please let me know what you thought of The Story of Stuff.

And as always thank you for taking the time to visit, I appreciate it.

Life’s too short not to be happy!

“Life’s too short not to be happy!”

- Dr. Timothy Sharp

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On The Happiness Institute, one of my favorite websites:

http://thehappinessinstitute.com/

Dr. Timothy Sharp (AKA Dr. Happy) told a story about a friend of his who died suddenly:

Happiness is…telling someone you love them, before it’s too late!

Just over one year ago a very good friend of mine died. He was only 42 years old, stepped out on to a road without looking, and then he wasn’t with us any more.

Just a month or so ago, on the anniversary of his death, quite a few friends were reminded of our loss and quite a few emails and messages and conversations were sent and had about how much we missed our good old friend and about what a fine chap he was.

It was nice in many ways, to remember our dear lost friend, and nice, also, to hear so many positive words spoken about Sam.

And I don’t want, in any way, to detract from what was done and said in those days by many of my good friends and, by me, but I do want to pick up on one element of the occassion that made me feel just a touch uncomfortable…

…I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if we’d said these things to our dear friend while he was alive!

Rather than delivering a eulogy at his funeral, rather than saying so many wonderful things to each other a year after his death, rather than…what if we’d all expressed our love and admiration and respect and liking for Sam while he was still alive?

Surely this would have been good for all of us?

So I did just that; unfortunately, it was too late to tell Sam but thankfully, it was not too late to tell a few other friends, and my wife and children. And thankfully it’s not too late to tell others in my family and social network which is exactly what I intend to do more of and…

…what I invite you all to do!

Tell someone you love them…go on, do it now! 

 

Reading this is especially poignant to me today as I just found out that an old friend died yesterday.  I hadn’t spoken to her in a few years, but I liked her a lot.  She was funny and caring and generous.  She made me laugh when I was with her and really listened to me when I spoke.  But I never told her how much I appreciated her; how much I appreciated the fact that I really felt heard by her when I spoke, how much I appreciated the laughter we shared.

Today I plan to tell several people that I love them.  Now before it’s too late.

I want to post a music video today – a song to remind me to say it now, before it’s too late.  A song by

Mike & The Mechanics  -   The Living Years

 

 

As always, thank you for visiting my blog.  I appreciate it.

 

Want happiness? Change your Attitude!

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. .”

- Maya Angelou

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Earlier this week, a fellow blogger put out a challenge for a few of us to write some posts on Happiness:

http://margekatherine.com/2012/05/09/happiness-care-to-share/

This isn’t a tough challenge for me – those of you who have followed my blog know that this is one of my favorite topics.

There are so many things that make me happy . . . so many things make me unhappy too – but what I’ve come to notice is that more often than not, it’s my attitude that is affecting my happiness level.  I love Maya Angelou’s quote above – the only thing I can really change is my attitude.

This fantastic video emphasizes three things:

Attitude, Awareness and Authenticity

Superb!

 

 

Please let me know what you thought of Neil Pasricha’s video.  And as always, thank you for visiting my blog.  I appreciate it.

 

Optimism!

“Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.”

- William James

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I just read a fascinating book called The Luck Factor

http://www.richardwiseman.com/books/luckfactor.html

In his book Richard Wiseman explores why some people seem so lucky. It turns out that these lucky people don’t have special powers, like ESP, or anything extra-ordinary.  Most of them are no different than you and me.  But he did discover a few special things about lucky people:

“Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”

He discovered that lucky people tend to be more optimistic in general and to expect good luck in their lives.  He noticed that people who expect luck have a more powerful ability to notice opportunities in their environment. Optimistic people’s field of perception is literally greater. And the great news is that he discovered that when you train people to expect luck, their field of perception increases accordingly!

Isn’t that wonderful!  This can be taught!  It’s not really a surprise, considering everything that has been written recently about neuroplasticity.  But still – how marvelous, people can be trained to expect luck and their field of perception will increase.  I just love that.  And I love the by-products for the research participants:

“The results were astounding with almost all participants reporting significant life changes: including increased levels of luck, self-esteem, physical well-being, confidence, and success.”

I’d like to end this post with a video of the person I consider the The Ambassador of Optimism – The Dalai Lama speaking about Optimism in the Face of Adversity.

 

 

Please let me know what you thought of The Dalai Lama’s video.  And  I’d love to hear about your experiences being lucky.

As always, thank you for visiting my blog.  I appreciate it.

 

 

Thinking Thoughts

“We can think of only one thing at a time.”

- St. Thomas Aquinas

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If we believe that we can only think one thought at a time, as St. Thomas Aquinas, Jose Silva and so many others have said, then why do we spend so much of our time wasting our precious one thought to sabotage ourselves?  If we take the time to actually pay attention to our thought process, it’s amazing how many of our thoughts are negative.  In one of my past posts, Our Magnificent Mind I explored this phenomena.

But once we get stuck in that negative spiral, how can we get out?  One thing that I have found helpful is using very simple affirmations.  For example, if I’m dwelling on a pain in my body and my thoughts, like a terrier,  won’t let go of focusing on the pain and even worse, catastrophizing the pain (you might have experienced that one, a small pain in the body suddenly becomes cancerous and death inducing) – I invoke a a simple sentence.  I say cancel/cancel, and replace the blah blah in my head with “I am Strong, Vibrantly Fit and Healthy!”  A short, simple sentence which replaces the negative chatter with a positive statement.  If I’m awake at night worried about money and catastrophizing that one, I say cancel/cancel and replace that negative spiral with “I am Powerful, Abundantly Prosperous and Wealthy!”  I find that the secret is to keep it short and simple, and to focus it directly at the specific negative thought.

Of course I didn’t make this up!  This technique has been used for years by millions of people.  Here is one fun article about the use of affirmations from Scott Adams, the man who created the Dilbert comics:

http://www.mindpowernews.com/DilbertAffirmations.htm

This is from a great site called Mind Power News.  They have a wonderful newsletter I highly recommend.

I learned this technique at a Silva Mind Method Course.  For those of you who have not heard of Silva, I urge you to explore their site and read Jose Silva’s book The Silva Mind Control Method.   For those of you living in NZ, you can explore Silva at:

http://www.thesilvamethod.co.nz/

There are several videos on YouTube of Jose Silva discussing his technique.  Here is one that I found informative:

 

Please let me know what you thought of Jose Silva’s video.  And If you have done a Silva Mind Method Course I’d love to hear about your experience.

As always, thank you for visiting my blog.  I appreciate it.