The M.A.P. Maker

Gratitude in a bowl

Want an easy way to significantly improve the quality of your life? One that's available to you right here, right now, at no cost to you? Try gratitude. Studies have shown some of its many benefits include:

• More positive emotion

• More life satisfaction

• More optimism

• Lower levels of depression

• Lower levels of stress

• Greater goal attainment

• Greater feeling of connectedness to others

(Here's a good summary of some of the research on the benefits of gratitude.)

I've been focusing on gratitude a lot lately in my own journey. Not just gratitude for the big obvious things, but also gratitude for the little things I typically take for granted. This morning, gratitude came in a bowl. 

As I was eating my muesli with yogurt and honey, I started picturing all the threads of connection radiating out from that bowl. When I really started thinking about it, it was mind-boggling how many people had to be involved, and how many different things had to come together. When I really take the time to ponder it, it seems nothing short of miraculous. 

I started with the grains in the muesli. There was an opportunity to be grateful for the farmer who grew them. And for the sun and the rain (or irrigation) that provided them with what they needed to grow. And for all the people and companies who supported the farmer in the process. 

From there I started thinking about how that grain got from the farm to my bowl, and all the people and processes that had to touch it. 

And that's just the grain. There are also the almonds, and the yogurt, and the bowl I was using, and the spoon.

The first time I tried this gratitude exercise, I was sitting and savoring a cup of coffee. Really, anything in your life you appreciate and enjoy could be the subject of this focus. 

The more you realize how much there is to be grateful for, even in the little things in life, the more available the benefits of gratitude are. 

So what are you grateful for?

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

2 questions to stimulate a fresh perspective

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?' 

- Rachel Carson

Do you feel stuck or uninspired? In a mental rut? Have the colors faded in your world? 

What if there were a way to jump out of that rut without making a single change in the external circumstances of you life. As you may have guessed already, there is. 

Take a minute to really spend some time with the questions in the Rachel Carson quote above. Imagine using them to create a lens through which to look at your life. What difference could that make?

What if I knew I would never see it again?

On occasion I go to an ecstatic dance event here in Seattle. After one dance a couple years ago, a woman described her experience dancing with her boyfriend. She said, "I started imagining, 'What if this were our last dance? What if this were the last time I got to do this with him?" 

That one little question made that night's dance especially powerful and moving for her, because it put her in a place of being truly aware and appreciative of what she had, rather than experiencing it on autopilot.

Part of the power of asking these questions is that it forces you to take yourself off autopilot and engage the world around you with fresh eyes. 

What if I had never seen this before? 

Have you ever been delighted with something new, then gotten so used to it that you scarcely even notice it any longer? Imagine that effect, but instead of that one thing, apply it to your entire life. That's how many people go through their days. 

To start countering that, experiment with looking at things as though you had never seen them before. Spark your curiosity. The world is a pretty amazing place, if you stop and pay attention. 

To help you look at something as though you have never seen it before, here are some questions to ask: 

• What could this be used for?
• How does this work?
• How was this made?
• Who would use something like this? How?
• Where was this made? 
• Who made it? What human hands touched this?
• How did this get here?
• Who came up with the idea for this? 

Questions like these can start to make even the simplest and most mundane of items objects of curiosity and wonder. 

A variation on the never-before-seen theme is looking at someone you know well - a loved one, for example - and imagining never having met them before. Try to look at them with fresh eyes and ask yourself what you notice. What do you appreciate? What do you enjoy? What are you currently taking for granted?

Try this: For the next week, practice looking at things with fresh eyes. Make a habit of asking questions like the ones I listed above. Challenge yourself to find wonder in the mundane. 

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Gratitude in bed

Ever have one of those days where things go downhill as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning? That first hour of the day can have a significant impact on how the rest of the day unfolds. 

As I've mentioned before here, I'm not always the most naturally positive person in the morning. It often takes a conscious effort for me to shift into positive gear (see my posts on my morning reading and my morning crossroads question). 

I have a close friend who makes a habit of making a gratitude list in her head as she's lying in bed drifting off to sleep at night. As a morning attitude sculpting tool, I decided to riff off of that idea and do that gratitude review first thing in the morning when I wake up. 

Lying in bed, I start to review what I'm thankful for. It's a great way to wipe the slate clean of any petty negative or limiting thoughts and get my mind focused immediately in a positive direction. 

The best part is that it's something even the busiest person has time for. I like to spend a few minutes letting my mind explore the reasons for gratitude in my life, but it could be an effective exercise in as little as sixty seconds. The key is to take it out of an intellectual checklist and let yourself really feel the gratitude. 

You might even extend the idea with a gratitude shower, or a gratitude breakfast, or a gratitude commute. Any time you have an activity that keeps your mind unoccupied for a few minutes, you have an opportunity to fill that space with a gratitude review. 

--

Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams

--

by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst

Irritation-b-gone ("I'm fortunate that____.")

Do you ever find yourself wasting energy getting irritated at small things that don't really matter. I sure do. I don't even want to think about the cumulative hours and hours I have spent over the course of my life being steamed about things that weren't important in the greater scheme of things.

That kind of irritation is a needless energy drain in our lives. It accomplishes little, and only serves to make us feel bad, angry, like victims, etc.

The good news is that it's something that is easily remedied (or at least drastically reduced). How? Shift your perspective with a simple observation..."I'm fortunate that_______."

Let's say your internet is down and you're on the phone with tech support trying to figure out what the problem is. It took the person "helping" you ten minutes to spell your name right so they could find you in their system to begin with. Now that they have, they seem more clueless than you are about what the problem is. You have the company's entire repertoire of on-hold music memorized. Worse yet, they interrupt the hold music every ten seconds with an ad trying to sell you more of their services. 

It's easy to get wrapped up in what's irritating about that, in how the experience you're having differs from your expectations, and how it's keeping you from doing what you'd rather be doing with your day.

But then you break out the magic perspective shifting question. "How am I fortunate?" Try to make the answer relate to your source of irritation if you can.

For example, "I'm fortunate that I have an internet connection to begin with. Many people don't. I'm fortunate that I have this computer. Many people don't. I'm fortunate that this is one of my big problems today. Many people are trying to figure out where their child's next meal is going to come from." Or my favorite, "I'm fortunate that I have all this time on hold to think about how I'm fortunate." ;-)

This approach won't magically make all the irritation in your life go away, but if you make it a habit, you might just be surprised at how much of an impact it can make.

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

Get 25% happier with gratitude

What if there were a way to get 25% happier in your life. Would you want to try it out?

According to Alvaro Fernandez, author of Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, it's a simple matter of gratitude. In an interview over on  The Huffington Post, he shares three key points from his book...

First, the practice of gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25%. Second, this is not hard to achieve - a few hours writing a gratitude journal over 3 weeks can create an effect that lasts 6 months if not more. Third, that cultivating gratitude brings other health effects, such as longer and better quality sleep time.

He offers some suggestions on how to cultivate gratitude...

The most common method we use in our research is to ask people to keep a "Gratitude Journal" where you write something you feel grateful for. Doing so 4 times a week, for as little as 3 weeks, is often enough to create a meaningful difference in one's level of happiness. Another exercise is to write a "Gratitude Letter" to a person who has exerted a positive influence on one's life but whom we have not properly thanked in the past, and then to meet that person and read the letter to them face to face.

And talks a little bit about the findings and where they come from...

The benefits seem to be very similar using both methods in terms of enhanced happiness, health and wellbeing. Most of the outcomes are self-reported, but there is an increasing emphasis on measuring objective data such as cortisol and stress levels, heart rate variability, and even brain activation patterns. The work of Richard Davidson is exemplary in that respect, showing how mindfulness practice can rewire some activation patterns in the frontal lobes.

All in all, it's a fascinating interview, and worth the read.

(Need more prompting for gratitude exploration? Zip on back to my post with 15 gratitude prompting questions.)

 

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM

 

15 questions to prompt your gratitude

Here in the US, it's Thanksgiving day, and that's a great reminder to really stop and ask, "What am I thankful for?"

Studies on actively engaging in gratitude have shown that it has an enormously positive effect on our lives. Yet in the go-go bustle of our day-to-day activities, and the pressures and stress of modern life, it's easy to lose touch with it.

With that in mind, here are some questions to help prompt your thankful thoughts...

1. Who do I appreciate?

2. How am I fortunate?

3. What material possessions am I thankful for?

4. What abilities do I have that I'm grateful for?

5. What about my surroundings (home/neighborhood/city/etc.) am I thankful for?

6. What experiences have I had that I am grateful for?

7. What happened today/yesterday/this week/this month/this year that I am  grateful for?

8. What opportunities do I have that I am thankful for?

9. What have others in my life done that I am thankful for?

10. What have others done that I am benefiting from in my life (even if I don't know who those people are)?

11. What relationships am I thankful for?

12. What am I taking for granted that, if I stop to think about it, I am grateful for?

13. What is there about the challenges/difficulties I have experienced (or am currently experiencing) that I can be thankful for? (e.g., What have I learned? How have I grown?)

14. What is different today than it was a year ago that I'm thankful for?

15. What insights have I gained that I am grateful for?

These questions are a great start, but don't stop there. Come up with your own questions. Brainstorm as many gratitude-prompting questions as you can think of. Then, instead of sitting down with a gratitude journal and thinking, "OK, what am I grateful for," pick one of the questions and explore that.

By the time you finish all the questions, you'll have a really deep picture of the gratitude in your life. You'll also have a great resource to go back through on those days when you're feeling a bit bah humbug.

What other gratitude prompting questions come to mind? Post them here!

 

Check out The Occupational Adventure Guide

Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst ^TM