June 19 Weekly Challenge: Cultivating Gratitude
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themedalist
Posts: 3,212 Member
Theme: Happiness Challenge
Challenge: Cultivating Gratitude
We all have blessings in our lives, gifts that are given to us freely that make our lives better and often easier than they would be otherwise. These gifts may be our health, a supportive spouse, our children and grandchildren, a trusted confidant, our unique talents and skills, access to good food and clean water, to name just a few. Our list of gifts and blessings is long and deeply personal. And each of us every day is given the gift of time...1440 minutes a day to accomplish what we need and want to do. Our time "bank accounts" get replenished every day, with new opportunities to make progress on the goals we have and the things we care about. To me, that is one of the greatest gifts of all.
Unfortunately, it's easy to overlook our many gifts and take them for granted. This week, let's spend some time reflecting on what we have been given. Cultivating gratitude as a daily practice leads to greater happiness and a multitude of other health and life benefits, as you'll see from the resources below.
To benefit fully from the transformative power of cultivating gratitude, it's important that we take some time to reflect on how each gift has impacted our life and what it means to us. A brief momentary recognition (a positive thought) isn't enough...we need to take some time to appreciate our gifts. In fact, cultivating positive experiences throughout our day including gratitude and allowing them to "seep in" has been found to physically change the structure of our brains resulting in even greater happiness and a deeper sense of well-being. Optimism can become our "default" setting with practice! (See Rick Hanson's book, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence for a great explanation of this process).
This Week's Challenge: Take 5-10 minutes each day and write down something you are grateful for and how it's benefited your life. Whether you use pen and paper or an online journal such as Penzu, writing down your reflections gives you something to refer back to and reread in the future. Plus, the act of writing deepens the mind-brain connection in a way that thoughts do not.
While I hope that many of our weekly challenges become something you do as a daily practice, this challenge is particularly special to me and one I hope you adopt as a regular practice. It's been a game changer in my life! Cultivating gratitude does indeed lead to greater happiness and a deeper sense of well being.
Wednesday Check-in: Look for a new post this Wednesday. Please let us know how it goes for you this week. I'm looking forward to hearing about your progress and I know others are too. We can all learn from each other.
Make it a great week!
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Suggested Resources:
The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life
http://happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/
How Gratitude Leads to a Happier Life
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201511/how-gratitude-leads-happier-life
TED Talk: Want to be happy? Be grateful.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful
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Challenge: Cultivating Gratitude
We all have blessings in our lives, gifts that are given to us freely that make our lives better and often easier than they would be otherwise. These gifts may be our health, a supportive spouse, our children and grandchildren, a trusted confidant, our unique talents and skills, access to good food and clean water, to name just a few. Our list of gifts and blessings is long and deeply personal. And each of us every day is given the gift of time...1440 minutes a day to accomplish what we need and want to do. Our time "bank accounts" get replenished every day, with new opportunities to make progress on the goals we have and the things we care about. To me, that is one of the greatest gifts of all.
Unfortunately, it's easy to overlook our many gifts and take them for granted. This week, let's spend some time reflecting on what we have been given. Cultivating gratitude as a daily practice leads to greater happiness and a multitude of other health and life benefits, as you'll see from the resources below.
To benefit fully from the transformative power of cultivating gratitude, it's important that we take some time to reflect on how each gift has impacted our life and what it means to us. A brief momentary recognition (a positive thought) isn't enough...we need to take some time to appreciate our gifts. In fact, cultivating positive experiences throughout our day including gratitude and allowing them to "seep in" has been found to physically change the structure of our brains resulting in even greater happiness and a deeper sense of well-being. Optimism can become our "default" setting with practice! (See Rick Hanson's book, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence for a great explanation of this process).
This Week's Challenge: Take 5-10 minutes each day and write down something you are grateful for and how it's benefited your life. Whether you use pen and paper or an online journal such as Penzu, writing down your reflections gives you something to refer back to and reread in the future. Plus, the act of writing deepens the mind-brain connection in a way that thoughts do not.
While I hope that many of our weekly challenges become something you do as a daily practice, this challenge is particularly special to me and one I hope you adopt as a regular practice. It's been a game changer in my life! Cultivating gratitude does indeed lead to greater happiness and a deeper sense of well being.
Wednesday Check-in: Look for a new post this Wednesday. Please let us know how it goes for you this week. I'm looking forward to hearing about your progress and I know others are too. We can all learn from each other.
Make it a great week!
...................................................................................................................................................
Suggested Resources:
The 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About: How Gratitude Can Change Your Life
http://happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/
How Gratitude Leads to a Happier Life
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201511/how-gratitude-leads-happier-life
TED Talk: Want to be happy? Be grateful.
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_steindl_rast_want_to_be_happy_be_grateful
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Replies
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Someone once told me that we should all stop saying "sorry" (as in the "sorry I'm late", not if you did something wrong to someone of course) and say instead "thank you" (as in "thank you for waiting for me").
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Someone once told me that we should all stop saying "sorry" (as in the "sorry I'm late", not if you did something wrong to someone of course) and say instead "thank you" (as in "thank you for waiting for me").
James Clear wrote about the power and importance of the words Thank You and he mentions your scenario:
http://jamesclear.com/say-thank-you5 -
There are so many things I love about my life and for which I am grateful. My goal this week is to look for the things that are in my life but aren't so great and find reasons why I need them to help me grow, and find ways to be grateful for them. There's something positive about everything if we just look for it.5
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I have always been wanting to do keep a gratitude journal, and I have tried with Penzu, but it didn't work for me. Today, thanks to this challenge,I simply created a Gratitude folder in Dropbox (which I access daily for work and other things). I was surprised that I really wasn't done with my journaling after 10 minutes - I had assumed that I would have a hard time filling up 5 minutes.
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This is a great challenge. Thank you!2
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There are so many things I love about my life and for which I am grateful. My goal this week is to look for the things that are in my life but aren't so great and find reasons why I need them to help me grow, and find ways to be grateful for them. There's something positive about everything if we just look for it.
@nebslp, this is a magnificent idea! I love it!
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I have always been wanting to do keep a gratitude journal, and I have tried with Penzu, but it didn't work for me. Today, thanks to this challenge,I simply created a Gratitude folder in Dropbox (which I access daily for work and other things). I was surprised that I really wasn't done with my journaling after 10 minutes - I had assumed that I would have a hard time filling up 5 minutes.
@77tes, using Dropbox as an alternative way to journal is a great idea! Thanks for suggesting it.
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"...it's important that we take some time to reflect on how each gift has impacted our life and what it means to us. A brief momentary recognition (a positive thought) isn't enough..."
I often have thoughts of gratitude about something or another that has happened, or have said a genuine thank you to someone, but to take time, much more time than that passing thought of recognition of pleasure or thankfulness, and then to actually journal about it is something that I have never considered.
I am intrigued.
PS: I'm looking forward to this week's resources. I'm especially interested in the TED Talk. My eldest son introduced me to TED Talks a good while ago. Thank you for finding interesting and worth our time resources about the topics at hand for the week.
:flowerforyou:4 -
texasgardnr wrote: »"...it's important that we take some time to reflect on how each gift has impacted our life and what it means to us. A brief momentary recognition (a positive thought) isn't enough..."
I often have thoughts of gratitude about something or another that has happened, or have said a genuine thank you to someone, but to take time, much more time than that passing thought of recognition of pleasure or thankfulness, and then to actually journal about it is something that I have never considered.
I am intrigued.
PS: I'm looking forward to this week's resources. I'm especially interested in the TED Talk. My eldest son introduced me to TED Talks a good while ago. Thank you for finding interesting and worth our time resources about the topics at hand for the week.
:flowerforyou:
Hi, @texasgardnr, I want to clarify, just a bit.
To express our appreciation in words or thoughts briefly is certainly gratitude and even fleeting moments of gratitude are good. But what I'm really hoping many people get from this week is cultivating an "attitude for gratitude" and that takes a little more time. Our brains are a learning organ and one of the best ways that they learn is from experiences. Brains get bombarded with thoughts, but it's the positive and negative experiences that we have that truly have an impact on our brains. The more we let our gratitude "seep in" and become an experience and the more we revel in the positive emotions associated with it, the more our brains effectively say, "Hey, I like this...let's have more of these great experiences!" Practiced enough times, cultivating gratitude "experiences" triggers our brains to build new neural networks that make future expressions of gratitude, happiness, and optimism more likely and natural for us... they can become our default characteristics.
The science of how this happens is called neuroplasticity and it's fascinating to me. Rick Hanson's book (referenced above) is a great resource on the subject.4 -
I am grateful for family and always supporting me
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I LOVE this week's challenge! I have a cute little 5"x7" spiral notebook I bought at the beginning of the year that I write in every night...It's my "5 things I'm grateful for today..." journal. I don't spend time thinking about why I'm grateful for those 5 things or how they benefit my life, though, and I think this is a great idea. I've been under so much stress, both at work and at home, lately that I've been really struggling feeling gratitude. I'm usually a very positive optimistic person so this is coming at a time that I really need it. I'm hoping this will turn my whole outlook around and get me back to being "me" again!
Thank you so much for coming up with these ideas and the reference materials for us. I appreciate you and your efforts so much!4 -
Denise, Thank you for the explanation. That makes sense now. I pulled out an unused bound composition book with a fun hard cover to use this for my gratitude journal book. This will help make it more special for me.
Recently I have been listing 4-5 things that I am grateful for in the little spiral notebook that I use during my morning prayer time, and just like OConnell5483 wrote above, I also don't spend time thinking about why I was grateful for those 4-5 things I wrote down or how they benefited my life. It was only an ongoing list to help me to remember and to be grateful for my blessings, and not just remember or focus on my needs or struggles. It really is so easy to take blessings for granted.
This reflection and writing will definitely be taking things up a notch for me.
A little while ago I downloaded the e book by Rick Hanson from the library. Since I worked in medicine back in the day, I enjoy learning about what is being discovered about the human body or is new in medicine. The brain has always been fascinating to me, so I am already interested in his findings and ideas.
:flowerforyou:4
