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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
M.J. Ryan
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July 2 - July 29, 2021
Lauren had lived in twelve different foster homes since she was eight. When she moved, her possessions fit in one plastic trash bag. She was about to “age out” of the California foster system, with no place to live, no money, no job, when Dave met her. But, he said, she was the happiest person he'd ever met. Why? Because when she was ten, 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. Every since, no matter where she lived, Lauren touched that rock and was
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When you take all these good effects together, practicing appreciation adds 6.9 years to your life, which is a greater effect statistically than stopping smoking or exercising.
Why is it that gratitude can have such positive mind/body/spirit effects? All we have so far is a hypothesis, but I believe it is a powerful one. From research done on Buddhist monks' brains, we are beginning to believe that when we think positive thoughts such as gratitude, kindness, optimism, etc., we activate our left prefrontal cortex and flood our bodies with the feel-good hormones, which give us an upswing in mood in the short term and strengthens our immune system in the long run. Conversely, when we think negative, angry, worried, hopeless, pessimistic thoughts, we activate our right
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If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. —LAO TZU
gratitude is the realization that we have everything we need, at least in this moment.
Like so many of us, I spent a great deal of my life, in my twenties and early thirties, cataloging all the ways I had been injured and abused. In therapy and out, with friends and loved ones, I analyzed and categorized the whos, whats, and wheres of my misery. I was a confirmed pessimist, always able to see the dark side of anything and everything.
The longer I live, the more I recognize that cultivating an attitude of gratitude is the key to living from an open heart, that is, living in a spirit of joyful expectation.
One of the incredible truths about gratitude is that it is impossible to feel both the positive emotion of thankfulness and a negative emotion such as anger or fear at the same time. Gratitude births only positive feelings—love, compassion, joy, and hope. As we focus on what we are thankful for, fear, anger, and bitterness simply melt away, seemingly without effort.
That's why gratitude is so powerful. It helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness where we notice what's right instead of what's wrong. Gratitude reminds us to be like plants, which turn toward, not away, from the light.
Tom comes from a family of highly successful businesspeople who taught him to climb the ladder of success by criticizing him whenever he did something wrong. He learned early on that life is “hard work,” that it's a “dog-eat-dog world,” and that to get ahead he had to never make a mistake. While he did succeed, including getting an M.B.A. from a top business school, he was never happy. To him, work seemed only drudgery; he spent much of his time noticing what he did wrong: he didn't assert himself at the meeting,
he should have made more calls. Most of the time he felt lifeless and depressed.
“What do I feel grateful for about myself?” In this way, he reminded himself of his resources, strengths, and talents. Then, at the end of the day, he was to finish work by asking, “What did I do today that I feel good about?”
Gratitude makes us feel good because it helps us widen our frame of vision. Under depression or stress, we can develop tunnel vision, seeing only this problem, that difficulty. We can get overtaken by a heavy, dark feeling of despair. But when we experience a sense of gratitude, we give ourselves a dose of mental sunshine. Suddenly the world seems brighter, and we have more options.
if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live the moment at hand.” Gratitude brings you back to the present moment, to all that is working perfectly right now. Tomorrow may bring difficulties, but for right now, things are pretty good.
Sometimes I go about with pity for myself and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. —OJIBWAY SAYING
The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be. —SHAKTI GAWAIN
A point worth pondering: Upon completing the Universe, the Great Creator pronounced it “very good.” Not “perfect.” —SARAH BAN BREATHNACH
We simply don't believe we're good enough as we are in our humble, human, imperfect state, and must therefore compensate by being Miss Perfect Goody-Two-Shoes.
That was certainly true for me. Somehow, as a child, I got the message that if only I did everything perfectly, life would be OK.
Yes. Perfection is a spirit killer. Not always in the ways we see others, but in the ways we punish ourselves. Until of course the day when we "accept" ourselves as losers.
Because perfectionism is born of a sense of inadequacy, of lack, an attitude of gratitude counteracts it by tapping us into the experience of abundance.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. —HENRY MILLER
Giving thanks for what we have in our lives is like that pause when eating. It allows us to feel full, to register on the emotional and spiritual level that we have, in fact, been given “enough.” If we don't practice gratitude on a daily basis, it's easy to over-consume, to feel a lack and to try to fill that lack through possessions, because on a psychological level we haven't registered that we already have what we need.
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet. —EMILY DICKINSON
The choice is ours, in every moment. Do we want to live in seeming safety, shut inside the shell of our individuality, unwilling to experience the deep and abiding connections that are ours in any case, or are we willing to risk, over and over, having our hearts broken open to the beauty and the pain of all that is ours to experience? When do you experience an open heart? What are the conditions that foster your willingness to open your heart? As we practice true gratitude, we learn to take the risk over and over again.
We recognize that we cannot live outside of the great web of life that lovingly holds us in its nurturing embrace, and we vow to protect the sanctity of that web.
If the only prayer you say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice. —MEISTER ECKHART
I love the sensibility of this exchange that is inherent in Native American spirituality. Whenever a person is about to take the life of something—a deer, a tree—he or she humbly asks permission of the Spirit that dwells in the animal or plant, and gives thanks for their willingness to sacrifice their own life. Sometimes, an offering, such as a pinch of corn or tobacco, is given in compensation. Such an act acknowledges that something has been given and received on both sides.
Gratitude - Native American cultures
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. —FRANCIS P. CHURCH
The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart. —JOHN WELWOOD
The Zen master Ling Chi said that the miracle is not to walk on burning charcoal or in the thin air or on the water; the miracle is just to walk on earth. You breathe in. You become aware of the fact that you are alive. You are still alive and you are walking on this beautiful planet. . . . The greatest of all miracles is to be alive. —THICH NHAT HANH
“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful,” he reminds us. “How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural—you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
“waking up,” by which they mean, I think, living life to its fullest because we are aware of living it moment to moment. Aware of breathing in, aware of breathing out; aware of chewing and swallowing our food; aware of placing one foot in front of the other when walking. Aware of seeing your infant son, of the effect of your words on a coworker, of the fact that your one foot is resting on top of the other.
"Woke" culture of another description!
Einstein was asked what he thought the most important question was that a human being needed to answer. His reply was “Is the universe friendly or not?” —JOAN BORYSENKO
I have lapses in believing in the friendly universe, particularly when things are going badly money-wise. When I forget, I take out a piece of paper on which I've copied down a piece of an Inuit teaching: “The inhabitant or soul of the universe is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman a voice so fine . . . that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is ‘Sila ersinarsinivdluge,’ ‘Be not afraid of the universe.’” It helps me remember that if I place my trust in the beneficence of the universe, things tend to work out. And if
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Let Gratitude Flow Naturally One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. —HENRY MILLER
Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it. —THADDEUS GOLAS
What she said I have carried with me ever since: “Gratitude is like a flashlight. If you go out in your yard at night and turn on a flashlight, you suddenly can see what's there. It was always there, but you couldn't see it in the dark.”
Dawna Markova, friend of Diane BB
This is what binds all people and all creation together—the gratuity of the gift of being. —MATTHEW FOX
Gratefulness, or “great-fullness” as Brother David Steindl-Rast calls it, “is the full response of the human heart to the gratuitousness of all that is.”
In relation to others, gratitude is good manners; in relation to ourselves, it is a habit of the heart and a spiritual discipline. —DAPHNE ROSE KINGMA
make a personal connection to the people who came across her path—garbage collectors, long-distance operators, or the person selling coffee on the corner. No matter what was going on in her own life, no matter how rushed or upset she was, she took the time to connect. I'd hear her on the phone with the airline reservations desk. In the course of getting a flight she'd learn the woman's name, where she lived, and the fact that she, like Daphne, loved flashy high heels. Daphne was so genuinely appreciative of the other person's help that the person on the other end of the phone felt washed in a
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We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last
piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. . . . —VICTOR FRANKL
“Attitude Is the Only Disability.” While I am sure it was a slogan for disabled people's rights, I suddenly realized its larger implications—what we think about our lives, our attitude—has the ability to enable or disable us.
Like no one else, she has proven to me that gratitude is an attitude that can be consciously chosen, no matter what our circumstances. We can focus on the negative and descend into a spiral of negativity and gloom. Or we can choose to look at what's right in any given situation, and become a beacon of love and joy.
The secret to life is to know when enough is enough. —DR. VINCENT RYAN
That's why the idea of cultivating “the gratitude attitude” is so popular among twelve-step programs. As Emmet Miller notes in Gratitude: A Way of Life, “Gratitude has to do with feeling full, complete, adequate—we have everything we need and deserve; we approach the world with a sense of value.”
As Lao Tzu proclaimed, “He who knows enough is enough will always have enough.”
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. —ALBERT EINSTEIN
Why do we in the West have so much of the stuff? We didn't do anything necessarily to deserve it (and those who think they do deserve it find themselves on a moral slippery slope, which leads to the assumption that those who are suffering from poverty, illness, or plagues did something to deserve that).
