Wholeness Healing Center

Put Thanksgiving in Your Heart

November brings with it the musings of fall with the autumn leaves turning their colors and giving us the short but beautiful glimpse of beauty before ending their cycle of life. And perhaps it is the reminder that much as we might not be ready, we are finishing up yet another year which often gives us cause to pause, reassess where we have been this past year, and what we need to complete before the year end. It brings with it the greeting of the holiday seasons, specifically the reminder of our Thanksgiving holiday fast approaching. And as the holiday season will quickly be upon us, we might do best to consider using Thanksgiving’s antidotes of gratitude to take us through our holiday season in good grace. Just how do we want to enter this seasonal time?

Thanksgiving’s focus is about gratitude and I believe that focusing on gratitude can transcend our lives at times when we might most need it. It is the age old philosophical question of whether you see the glass of water half full or half empty. Does your answer to this question really impact your life, your mood, your well being? I believe that it can. And if that is the case, gratitude needs to be with us throughout the year, but the holiday time can redefine our commitment to this practice, helping us to continue to work towards making it a part of our daily thought process. Dr. Emmons said, “Gratitude is a universal human experience that can be either a random occurrence of grace or attitude chosen to create a better life.”

Oprah talks about one of her favorite books being “Simple Abundance”. Through this book she practiced spending daily time listing five things that she was most grateful for that happened during the day. When we are feeling a lack of or desire for something more, we can work on shifting the mindset by making a list of all we already have in a certain area of our life. Focusing on our wealth of relationships, experiences, lifestyle, material goods, etc., can be a natural way to take ourselves to a center point of contentment and gratitude.

How does this really impact your life? Do you suppose that focusing on things you are grateful for can really change things?

We can control very little in our life. But one thing that we do have control over is how we feel and how we live our life. We control our own inner sense of peace and contentment by how we view the world and those around us. Consider the fact that we can appreciate our moment at any given time or we can “depreciate” it. We can brighten our day or we can dampen our day by how we perceive and think about the moment at hand which is back to the glass half full or half empty. How do you see it? Are you grateful for the half full glass or do you complain about it being half empty? And how does our attitude really impact us?

Try it. Take yourself back to something that you really immensely appreciated and had total gratitude. Shut your eyes, call in the moment, be in it. Allow yourself to sink into it with all your senses. Then become aware of how your inner being shifted, how your heart softened and opened, and how your whole sense of well-being shifted, felt lighter. Merely taking ourselves back to a moment in time like this can shift us in our present state. This is worth a lot if we can then live our day with feeling good about life versus focusing on those little pesky things that didn’t go quite right that day.

Gratitude can affect our emotional and physical states. Dr. Emmons from the University of California and Dr. McCullough conducted a study on gratitude and thankfulness. They divided hundreds of people into three groups in which each group had different types of journals. One group recorded daily events, another recorded hassles and the third group made lists of what they were grateful for. The last group reported more alertness, optimism, and better progress towards goals. They also felt more love.

These same researchers found that physical health was impacted because grateful people take better care of themselves and engage in more protective health behaviors such as regular exercise, a healthy diet, and regular physical examinations. Gratitude can help ward off stress as it helps us better manage stress. Grateful people tend to be more optimistic, which promotes better immune function.

So how do we want this Thanksgiving to give us a better sense of gratitude? A great idea is for all family members to take time to write a journal page of what they were grateful for this year. Take those written pages and scrapbook them into a gift to be given back to the family at Christmas time. Or perhaps you want to write to people who made a difference in your life this year. Tell them how their actions and their essence enriched your life.

Ideas for changing your thoughts and perspective can include some of Eric Garner’s ideas from Managetrainlearn.com. He suggests creating a Thank Bank. This is done by writing down all the things that you are grateful for in your life. Take this list and separate it into categories such as family, environment, work, home and then start writing out your list of gratitude for each category until you have exhausted it. When you are feeling down (and seeing life with the glass as half empty) take it out and read it. You will find yourself with the tool to help you shift to the perspective of seeing the glass as being half full.

Garner also talks about using the motto of the 3 A’s when interacting with people: Accepting, acknowledging and appreciating. Accept people for who they are, acknowledge people for what they do and appreciate them for just being around.

For more thoughts on gratitude check out our past newsletters of March 2005 and April 2005 on our web site at www.wholenessheali.wpenginepowered.com. May you have a blessed Thanksgiving and holiday season.

motto of the 3 A’s when interacting with people: Accepting, acknowledging and appreciating. Accept people for who they are, acknowledge people for what they do and appreciate them for just being around.

For more thoughts on gratitude check out our past newsletters of March 2005 and April 2005 on our web site at www.wholenessheali.wpenginepowered.com. May you have a blessed Thanksgiving and holiday season.

Emmons & McCullough, 2003. Highlights from the Research Projects on Thanksgiving and Gratitude

Tags: redefine your commitment to gratitude, the benefits of gratitude, using gratitude to shift our vision