MM#260--A Fundamental In Flourishing--A Rock (or a Rosary) in Your Pocket

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Last week we talked about the foundations in flourishing. Those foundations are exercising, reading and writing. So be sure to check out that Mojo Minute last week to ensure you don't skip any steps along your journey to building and creating a flourishing life. But the next step is to get your fundamentals right, your fundies, as we will call them. Those fundies are the habits you do each and every day, because by doing them they create strong habits and they start to build those connections in our brains and bodies that help us to automate our flourishing. Or, if we can't automate it, we can certainly help make our habits to be part of our routine, but we will feel out of place if we're not doing them, thereby making it harder to not do them versus doing them each and every day. And that's how you build a virtuous life, that's how you build a flourishing life. And so all that brings us to our fundamental of today, which is gratitude. Or, as the popular saying goes, gratitude works. And actually we covered a book by that title and we talked about this fundy way back, way, way back in Mojo Minute number 22. Wow, mojo Minute 22. Seems like forever ago. But gratitude does work, in fact. Let's go to our first pull quote to enlarge our pull of gratitude Knowledge, going to the book You're holding in your hands, a little book that can, I hope, have a profound effect on your life, to give you a sense of the power of experiencing great fullness, as the Benedictine monk brother David Stendhal Rast calls gratitude. I'd like to open with a story to share with you. I wrote this book in 1999, sometime after I got an email request from a guy who was a real estate agent in Southern California. David started a nonprofit helping teens in the California foster system who were about to turn 18 and lose state support. His nonprofit offered transition money, support in a place to stay. He wanted to know if I could sell him some copies of this book at a discount to give away to people who donated to his charity. I arranged to give him some copies for free and promptly forgot all about it. One day a package arrived in my mailbox. When I opened it, a small rock fell out. I opened the accompanying letter. It was from Dave, who was thanking me for the books and sending me the story of one of the youngsters he had helped, a 17-year-old named Lauren. Lauren had lived in 12 different foster homes since she was 8. When she moved, her possessions fit into one plastic trash bag. She was about to quote age out of the California foster system With no place to live, no money, no job, when Dave had met her, but he said she was the happiest person he had ever met. Why? Because when she was 10, she lived with Mommy Jean. Mommy Jean gave Lauren a small rock and told her to carry it always in her pocket Each time she felt it. She was to think of something to be grateful for Ever since, no matter where she lived, lauren touched that rock and she was grateful Since that day. Whenever I speak about gratitude, I give out pebbles. If I could, I would hand you one right now To help you not only practice an attitude of gratitude, but also to remember each time you touch it that, like Lauren, the magic of gratitude will lift your spirits at least a little, and it's available to you each and every day, no matter your circumstances. And that is what this book is all about. Wow, what a great little story. We got this quote from the book the Attitude of Gratitude how to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of your Life by MJ Ryan and I just love that story. I had to share it with you and think about that small rock placed in your pocket. If it could be a reminder to be grateful for the small things in life. I just find that super cool. The reason I find it super cool is I actually carry a light wood and rosary in my left pocket every day, so I can actually relate to this practice. It is a reminder for me to pray for something or someone throughout my day. But I can certainly tack on saying a prayer of gratefulness to our Lord Jesus Christ for his many blessings and graces for today. And perhaps, if you're a Catholic, you too can practice carrying a rosary in your pocket as a reminder. You can get small wooded ones that are light and easy to fit in your pocket. Or if you're a Christian, I know some folks that will carry a little cross, just something to constantly refer them back to their following the cross. So I do love this little reminder. But let's go back to the book, because here we find another nugget of wisdom. When I sat down to write about gratefulness in 1999, the only books on the subjects were religious ones and scientific research was non-existent. So what I did was think deeply about the effects of giving thanks on myself and others and wrote about that, and since then, primarily because of the positive psychology movement, there has been an explosion of research on the science of gratitude, and that's our little nugget of wisdom. But we'll keep going. What David McCullough, robert Eamons and David Snowden and others have discovered confirms all of my amateur armchair philosophizing. So what you'll read in these pages is consistent with what we know from the science. More on that in a bit. I still believe that gratitude is magic, though why? Because it is one of the only totally free, unbelievably simple ways to experience a sense of well-being and contentment on an ongoing basis. It's so easy that many of us still seem to discount it on that very basis or want to complicate it somehow. I remember emailing back and forth with a reporter a few years ago. She kept sending me questions about how to practice gratitude. I kept writing back in various forms Notice what's right in front of you in your life. Finally, after the fourth or fifth question, I replied that's it. It's as simple as that. There's no magic formula about writing it down or thinking of 10 things or putting a list under your pillow, however, or wherever you choose to notice the goodness in your life, you will experience the uplift of gratefulness. It's because it's so simple that we believe it will not work, but you don't have to take my word for it anymore. Research has actually confirmed the emotional and physical benefits of giving thanks, and here's where it really gets good. One of the most powerful studies comes from Martin Seligman's Reflective Happiness website. After counting their blessings for one week, 92% of people felt happier. 94% of people who said they were depressed felt less depressed. That means gratitude is as powerful as antidepressants and therapy. Now I'm not saying to throw away your medication, just to be sure to add this easy upper to your routine. In other studies, 90% of people found that expressing gratitude made them more joyful. 84% said it reduced stress and depression and helped create optimism, and 78% said it gave them more energy. Now that is some very, very cool stuff there, and I just love the science that confirms what we're actually feeling. But more importantly, we find out that the explosions of research in this area is coming from the positive psychology movement, and we know this movement because we have covered that man and this movement before. That man is Martin Seligman, and who in the world is he? Oh, he's the dude we covered in mojo, minute 100. That's all about flourishing. And Mojo, minute 63 about how to learn optimism. Oh, oh, and we covered Martin and connected him with Michael Hyatt stuff at the beginning of this year, all about changing our mindset. We call that one the new year Mindset. Try effective, about creating our best year ever. That's mojo, minute 194, and you might remember that that fundamental and flourishing. We talked about the three virtues in creating a positive mindset Number one, gratitude, number two, humility and number three, charity. So that's very good stuff and I'll put a link in the show notes for all these things. So if we are focusing on how to get better with this one part of this positive mindset, this gratitude, we are now reading the benefits of it and why we should practice it. Let's go back to the book for one last poll quote. Research also shows that being grateful means that you'll take better care of yourself. Folks who keep a weekly gratitude journal had fewer physical problems and exercise more regularly. They ate better and they got regular checkups. It seems that when we recognize ourselves in our lives as the precious once-in-a-lifetime opportunities they truly are, we take better care of ourselves. It also makes us kinder and more generous to others, less materialistic, more forgiving, more able to deal with stress and less prone to bitterness and be resentment or greed. When you take all of these good effects together, practicing appreciation adds six point nine years to your life, which is a greater effect statistically than stopping smoking or exercising. Let me repeat that again when you take all these good effects together, practicing appreciation adds 6.9 years to your life, which is statistically greater than stopping smoking or exercising. So what's going on here? Why is it that gratitude can have such a positive mind, body, spirit effect? All we have so far is a hypothesis, but I believe it's a powerful one. From research done on Buddhist monk's brains, we are beginning to believe that when we think positive thoughts, such as gratitude, kindness and optimism, etc. We activate our left prefrontal cortex and we flood our bodies with the feel-good hormones which give us an upswing and mood in the short term and strengthens our immune system in the long term. Conversely, when we think negative, angry, worried, hopeless, pessimistic thoughts, we activate our right prefrontal cortex and we flood our brains and our body with the stress hormones that send us into fight or flight, which depresses our mood, suppresses our immune system. In other words, we are bathing our bodies, minds and spirits in good or bad chemicals based on our thoughts, and gratitude is one of the most powerful positive chemical creators. I could go on and on. If you're interested in the science, please read Robert Eamon's book. Thanks, it's the best compilation of the research. Oh, we just love good book recommendations, don't? We Just love good book recommendations. Hold on, I'm jotting that one down, robert Eamon's book, thanks, so there is a little special kind of grace. Amen, thank you. You can always take good book recommendations. And here's another little gem, a little bonus. If you will Allow me one last quote Recently I learned the word gratitude comes from the Latin gracia, which also means grace and graciousness. I can't think of better qualities that I want to cultivate, particularly these days, whether it is so much division, nastiness and outright hatred being not just condoned but encouraged. May gratitude and its sister quality, generosity, flow not just in your mind and heart, but also spread from you to every nook and cranny of our world. Gracia, I like it, grace and graciousness. In today's Mojo Minute, let's ask simply for that special grace to cultivate in our hearts today an attitude of gratitude for all the special races that have come into our lives, especially on our health and our well-being. Let us, more importantly, adopt that attitude and be mindful of it each and every day, and let us practice this fundamental flourishing always and make it a rock or a rosary in our pocket as a reminder of God's grace always working in our lives.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your Mojo on.