When Our Buttons Are Pushed

Once we have religiously kept a gratitude diary for a few weeks, feeling gratitude can be fine most of the time when things are going well. But what happens when our buttons are pushed? Do we revert back to our old patterns of thought and behaviour? Feeling frustrated, angry, and just not good. This is very easy to do!

Next time this happens, I suggest NOT fighting these feelings, but allowing them. Then recognise that this is a gift. Work out why this is happening and where it is coming from. Get to the base of it, in a calm, reasoning manner. Preferrably with a friend who will be your sounding board and ask pertinent questions, to help you get to the hub of it. How can we clear the blocks and issues we have that interrupt and impede our happiness, if we don’t know what they are?

Once identified, we can work on them. So, next time our buttons are pushed, be grateful for this gift. Once we feel gratitude again, we will be re-centred. The surest way to always be happy is to always be grateful - no matter what! There is a gift in everything.

The Glad Game

Did anyone get to see a movie called"Pollyanna"?

In it, the heroine, who is a girl around 10yrs old, was taught by her father to play the Glad Game. Playing the game means finding something to be glad about, no matter what the situation is.

Pollyanna spreads this around, so that lots of other people start playing the game too. Their lives are enriched because of it.

If you haven't seen it, and you get a chance, I encourage you to have a look.
It's another version of a gratitude diary, and very effective.

Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness

Highlights from the Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness by the University of California Psychology Department :

Distinguishing Between Gratefulness and Indebtedness

Gratitude is the “forgotten factor” in happiness research. We are engaged in a long-term research project designed to create and disseminate a large body of novel scientific data on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its potential consequences for human health and well-being.

In a narrative study, people who write about being indebted to others reports higher levels of anger and lower levels of appreciation, happiness, and love relative to people who write about being grateful to others (Gray & Emmons, 2000).

The experience of indebtedness is less likely to lead to a desire to approach or make contact with others relative to an experience of gratefulness. Thus, indebtedness tends to be an aversive psychological state that is distinct from gratitude.

Learn more about this project at :

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/

Feeling joy for the little things

Gratitude is not just for the big or wonderful things in your life. It’s also for the many little things that make up your day that can give you joy :

A magnificent sunset (or sunrise if you’re up that early!)
The pure taste of clean water.
The smell of newly mowed grass or ground coffee.
Someone thanks you.
You receive a joke by email.

Feeling joy and gratitude for all the little things in your day sets you up for more. Like attracts like!

A Course In Miracles

A Course in Miracles changes your life and shows you how to change your mind about those things that rob you of your peace. A very deep and truthful source that teaches you to unravel your thought system that has kept you away from the truth.

Many people have been helped by A Course in Miracles , which has the power to change one's thinking from negative thoughts of fear and limitation to realization of one's divinity. It is taught in classes all over the world.

It is however, not the easiest of reads. A much simpler book, based on A Course in Miracles, is Love is Letting Go of Fear. It is a set of tools in the form of daily, progressive lessons for personal transformation, releasing the fears that rule our lives, and replacing those fears with love. These crucial lessons work through the concepts of giving, forgiveness, cause and effect, perspective, reactive behavior, victimhood, judgement, living in the present, releasing the past, visualization, freedom to choose, and taking responsibility. This one is a favourite of mine – you can open it at any page and find something relevant to the situtation you are in. Truly inspiring.

"The Secret"

Have you seen “The Secret” DVD yet?

It’s about the Law of Attraction and how we get everything we ask for. Gratitude is an important component of this and is emphasized in the film. Being grateful for what we have will bring more to be grateful for!

Watching the DVD once is not enough, if you are lucky enough to get to see it. You will want to see it over and over again, because you'll understand it better each time, and you will note different things in it each time. I found it best for me to watch about 20 minutes at a time, then let that sink in for a while. Sort of takes it from being academic, in your head, to your heart, where it will be most effective. So you'll need to get your own copy, and you can get it at The Secret DVD Shop.

TIP - ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

To encourage children to notice the positive things in life, ask them to say three positive things about their day before saying something negative.

This works great for the whole family. Instead of coming home complaining of every little thing that went wrong that day, they will come home sharing all the good news.

This will teach them to concentrate on the positives and forget about the silly negatives. This daily ritual could also be a fun way to begin dinner conversation each evening.

what Are You Attracting?

An attitude of gratitude is important in engaging the Law of Attraction. The more you appreciate what you have the more that you will receive to be appreciative of.

It sounds simple and yet many people complicate their lives by looking for only "great" things to be thankful for. We can be just as grateful for the simple things in our lives that we take for granted – sunsets, water on tap, hot showers, our health, friends, little things people do for us.

The more you are grateful, the more you get. .What are YOU grateful for? Remember, like attracts like….what are you attracting?

Gratitude For Children

Making thankfulness and gratitude a daily habit is beneficial for everyone, including our children.

We want our children to be appreciative and thoughtful, and teaching our children to attain an attitude of thankfulness will require repeated efforts over a long period of time, but it is well worth the effort.

A crucial point in teaching children about gratitude, is that children have to feel loved and cared for themselves, before they can really have concern for other’s feelings. Children must have their emotional needs met first before they can think beyond themselves and their own needs.

Keep a gratitude diary, in which only positive things are written down, keeping in mind the many things that we are blessed with on a daily basis. Our children can have their own journals, and if they can’t write, they can draw pictures.

Have your children make thank you cards and give the cards to someone special. Your children can write and/or verbalize thank-yous after they receive gifts and acts of kindness from others. This sets a good pattern of acting on thankfulness for the future.

And, of course, in order for our children to adopt an attitude of thankfulness, we must first have that attitude and model gracious manners and behavior ourselves, as adults. We need to focus on and be fortunate for what we have versus what we don’t have, and verbalize thankfulness. If we are constant complainers of bad fortune, our children will be, too, and will grow up with that attitude, as well.

We can model saying thank you to our spouses, family members, our children, and others. Remember to say thank you to your children when they have done something that you appreciate. We should accept and acknowledge our children’s hugs and kisses as forms of gratitude too.