The Gifts of Gratitude
Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? Did you experience enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness or anger? When 2,345 Americans were polled only 1 out of 3 reported being very happy. In fact a report showed that Americans were less happy in 2010-2012 than they were in 2005-2007.
My daughter Sarah did a wonderful presentation in her nursing class that showed 5 ways you can find greater joy in your life. And they only take 8 minutes a day. The amazing thing is her report focused on proven studies but the Bible says the exact same thing. We can make changes every day that will make us more grateful in our lives.
Glimpse the Future: Les Parrott who is a professor of clinical psychology for Seattle Pacific University and an ordained Nazarene minister said “Looking at the future and planning something exciting fills people with hope, and hope engenders (or produces) joy. We call it dreaming; dreaming combines two things that are vital to happiness, optimism and control. It is seeing you have choices and you can do good things with your life. If you have no goals in the future you are aiming for you will most likely hit hopelessness. When a drunk driver hits the one car on the side of the road people question why but in truth it was what the driver was focused on. He clutched the steering wheel, saw the car and stared at it saying to himself, don’t hit it. But where our eyes are, our actions follow and it is the same with our goals in life.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 God says this in the midst of our struggles, “Therefore, do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
There can be times in our life when the sadness seems to win; hope is just a shadow we vaguely see. There was a time I was very heartbroken, life and people had not turned out as I thought they would and I felt broken. I would lie in bed, curled up and cry for hours. One of my closest friends did during that time what I couldn’t do, she glimpsed the future for me and told me truths…it would get better, life would move on. She gave me hope as she described my future and I am so very grateful to her, because she was right. In Isaiah 43:19 God says, “See, I am doing a new thing? Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” The life we live now is a gift. Now when I start to feel that type of sadness, I intentionally focus on my dreams, the possibilities and dreams of my life and it makes me both hopeful and thankful.
The question is, do you dream every day? Do you look into the future and get excited about what is to come? Do you know what your goals are in life? Do you live in hope? If you don’t aim for a goal you will never know if you hit the mark. Having a hope for your future is God’s plan for you, Jeremiah 11:12 says, “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Intentional Reminders: Did you know even offering thanks and gratitude once a week for 12 weeks can increase happiness by as much as 25% and people who did this remained happier for up to six months after the experiment? The options of how to be thankful are limitless. Some people do a gratitude journal. Every day they write down things they are grateful for and keep a record to reflect on. In one study people were asked to write a gratitude letter to someone they were thankful for and write specific reasons they were grateful. Writing the letter made a big impact but delivering it gave even a bigger boost to the giver.
2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” It is taking our thoughts captive. The Bible is full of calls to be thankful and offer gratitude. Songs of worship often are songs of thanksgiving for who God is and what He has done. Intentional reminders help us to live in a place of finding things to be thankful for every day.
I use a grateful tile. I have it sitting in my bathroom and I try every day to write three things on it that I am thankful for…sometimes they are big…my children’s success, my grandson being born, God’s grace. Sometimes they are small, a great hair day, I lost a pound, the sun is shining. My ladies from the bible study have been on there because they bring me so much joy. Some days the words flow from the pen and I have no problem writing three amazing things…some days are harder…I have to search and hunt because I don’t feel grateful and that is the point of doing it. In the end when I have intentionally found things to be grateful for and they are on my tile I have refocused my mind and chosen to be grateful and I find I am happier all day long. Philippians 4:8 tells us, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”
What 3 things are you grateful for today? What can you do to make this part of your daily life?
Focus on Others: At Seattle Pacific University 200 students were divided in half and 100 of them were told to go do something self-indulgent. Go to the movies; eat junk food…whatever would make you feel good.
The other 100 were told to do something selfless for the day, pick up trash, volunteer at a retirement center…something that wasn’t about them.
The 100 students who were selfless all day scored higher on the happiness scale than those who had been self-indulgent all day. We know this don’t we, being generous and doing good to others gives us a sense of purpose and can even enhance the feeling that our lives have meaning which leads us to feeling good. Romans 5:5 tells us God has poured out His love into our hearts and it is that love we want to pour out onto others.
If you do 5 acts of generosity a day, above and beyond what you normally do, it will boost your sense of well-being. In the Bible you don’t have to look far for an example of focusing on others, Jesus literally poured His life out for others and in John 13:12-17 gave us a beautiful picture of serving as He washed the disciples feet and then said, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me Teacher and Lord and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
Recently I hit a wall because there was a hard thing going on in my life and I couldn’t control any of it but it felt like it was pressing in on me from all sides. I felt like all I did all day was spin. It went on for weeks and I struggled to get control of my emotions. Then a woman came to my attention that needed someone to come alongside and help her with her newborn. So for a month and a half I went every Friday night for four hours and helped her give him a bath and put him to sleep. After the second week I realized I wasn’t spinning anymore. The circumstances in my life hadn’t changed but I was no longer focused on them but instead focused on helping someone else and I was happier and so grateful for the time I had to hold and cuddle that little guy. It fed my heart.
What acts of generosity can you do even today to make a difference in the life of others? How can you remind yourself to hunt to opportunities to put others first?
Take Time to Celebrate: In relationships where a person responds to positive news with excitement and encouragement the relationship is stronger and the people are happier. Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work; if one fall down his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up? Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” My grateful tile has a knot on it because I have friends I am knotted together with; women I have known for years and we work together to nurture our friendships. We have been through death, divorce, cancer and many other heartbreaking life stories. We call ourselves the knot sisters because with each other and God we have a cord of three strands and it is a strong cord. What keeps us close is choosing to celebrate each other’s lives, the babies, the weddings, new jobs and answered prayers, the small and big victories. But it can be hard to do, when someone tells us they had a fantastic day most times our response is going to be that’s great let me tell you about mine. Take time to celebrate really speaks to the need we have for be engaged and focused on the person we are talking with and acknowledge their news. For me I have to keep eye contact on the person and think about them and what they are telling me. That singular focus helps me to stay present so I can celebrate with them.
And we need to find the positive. John Gottman in Seattle has an institute that focuses on how relationships can be healthy. He has found for a relationship be healthy we need to have 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative. That is a lot of positive and that is why we need to take time to celebrate.
Who do you have in your life that you want to focus on celebrating when they have good news? What do you need to do to make sure you respond with excitement and encouragement?
Savor the Moment: Slow down, stop and appreciate the taste and textures of your food, enjoy the colors of the sunset, pause to smell the evening air. Studies show being present in the moment can alleviate symptoms of anxiety, pain and depression. But what kills savoring the moment is worry. We aren’t living in the moment but worrying about the moments to come. In Luke 12:22 Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what your will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food and the body is more than clothes. Consider the birds, they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn. Yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” When we stop seeing our day as something to race through but instead see it as something to enjoy we can begin to savor the moments. My mom and dad savor the moments. They celebrate a new flower peeking through the dirt, and in fact when these little purple flowers would bloom in their lawn they would carefully transplant them so they could flourish. My mom has taken my hand and looked me in the eyes and told me how much she loved me just because. She has coined a phrase she tells her children and grandchildren, “I love you this day”. It is her savoring today, today I love you. Other times my dad will look at my mom and get teary eyed and turn and tell me how much he loves her, this woman he has been married to for over 50 years. No special reason, they just savor.
A professor who taught a class on positive psychology took her students to a hot chocolate café in Philadelphia. She had students sit around their cups of steaming, extra rich cocoa and discuss the details of their cocoa, how the cool whipped cream swims in the warm liquid, how the sweet flows over their tongue. At the end of the night the students said it was the best thing they had ever tasted, because they took the time to stop and savor it.
Do you savor the moment or race through to the end? What can you do to build into your life moments to breathe, moments to pause, moments to savor?
Our lives are truly a gift and living in gratitude is a gift we give to ourselves but also those who live around us. We can survive life or we can thrive in our life, our focus and how pro-active we are with gratitude can improve our quality of life. If you implement these 5 things, Glimpse the future, Intentional Reminders, Focus on Others, Take time to celebrate and Savor the moment you will have tools that will make you more grateful and happier. Gratitude is a muscle and the more your use it the stronger it gets. And as you increase the gratitude in your own life it also benefits others because you will be giving back and demonstrating qualities that bless others.
So I want to end as I began. Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? Did you experience enjoyment, happiness, worry, sadness or anger? Begin today to make habits that will increase your gratitude and happiness.
