Today’s post is late for the same reason that Friday’s was, and so I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for your understanding. It’s really rather fitting, because that sort of appreciation is at the heart of any good life, plus it was today’s scheduled assignment.
Feeling grateful requires us to consider what it is we’re grateful for. Whether it’s avoiding an experience we dislike or attaining some experience we do enjoy, it’s a positive internal experience to engage in conscious appreciation. Additionally, because gratitude is fairly universally held in high regard, it’s also often displayed quite clearly and often even publicly, which makes it a very multidirectional form of kindness.
It’s a very nice feeling to be appreciated, and when accept it we share in another person’s sense that there is a connection between us. Something happens which leads a person or people to be grateful, and when they express it, that in turn feels good for the recipients of that gratitude. On top of that, any witnesses to the expression are also very likely to be impacted positively.
All this being the case, today your assignment in the March of Kindness is to do three simple things:
1) Take a moment to be personally grateful for someone you’ve never met. Maybe it’s the person who invented your mechanical knee, maybe it’s the surgical team that saved your mother after the car accident, or maybe it’s just the person who made your favourite boots; the ones that always make you feel better when you wear them. The point is to find someone who needed to exist for you to feel a specific joy and then take a moment to feel genuine gratitude for them.
2) Today, keep your awareness set on high and watch for a stranger to thank. Don’t do this and be half-hearted; really look them in the eye and make sure you both know that you mean it. It’s not just that they let you into traffic or held a door, they honoured your very being by noting your presence even though they don’t know you. That’s no small thing.
3) And finally, for the most meaningful example, slow your life down and find someone so obvious that you tend to take them entirely for granted. Just imagine one month without them and how that would impact you, and then don’t just thank them–really take some time to detail how they impact your life. This is the sort of person who, if they were missing, much of your future would change for the worse. Appreciate their contribution to your life.
Some of these might feel awkward at first, but all will be worth it. Three little moments of kindness expressed within us, and some of them externally as well. With each of us doing it, that’s a lot of kindness that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Feel good about that. A bucket is filled with many drops. So thank you for joining us on the March of Kindness.
Enjoy your day.
peace. s
Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.
A lot of this suffering you can’t see but, if you’re watching for it, there’s plenty of instances where you can. When we see these things, rather than mock others or feeling superior, why not recognize our own good fortune? The good feelings we would get from that would create more compassion in us than if we ignored our own mental state and went straight to helping someone strictly out of obligation.
I know I said there would be no Thursday blogs this year while I worked on the edit of a new book, but since we took Monday to establish the plan for this year this week will be an exception.
If you get up and do the gratitude exercise first thing in the morning–while your brain is still waking itself up–you are establishing a pattern within yourself. Just like if you go to the gym and build muscle by using that part of your body, if you make appreciation a daily habit your brain will get better and better at it. Then your body starts to listen too.
It’s just a little 20 minute exercise each morning and it’s easy. What could be more important? Why work twice as hard to make more money to get more things to create a temporary sense of satisfaction when you could have your current life and just change how you feel about it?
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs orders what we need to reach our personal peak. First you must meet your Physiological needs. You have to have enough food and water and you must have enough shelter to be able to survive. It’s a painful to thing to want to be able to eat but to not be able to, whether you’re in a drought in Africa or a cancer ward in Edmonton. Most of us aren’t experiencing that and we can be grateful for that every day.
Next is Esteem. First and foremost you need to have self-esteem. You have to see that you deserved the love you were given. Having that, you will then benefit from the confidence and admiration of a group. In short you need to know that your impact will last beyond yourself and your days on this Earth. If you’re a boss or parent or coach or even a friend, you should feel grateful for the chance to serve others and to use your amazing abilities to inspire others to greatness themselves.
Your final and most important shift is when you live in a state of Self-Transcendence. That’s when you are so complete, so overflowing with success that you can stop thinking about you and you can start investing your time in thinking about others instead. That’s what created my books, movies and this blog. It’s hard to suffer when your mind hasn’t even created a you to do the suffering. And there is no you because your mind is fully absorbed in what you’re doing and your appreciation of how it helps others. Do not steal from yourself the incredible joy of having been a person who really made a meaningful difference.
So what’s first? If you’ve read me much then you know that the most important thing you can do with your consciousness is either want or appreciate. A little want is irritation, more is frustration, a lot is anger and if you hate things so much that you want to be someone else–that’s depression. Your other choice is appreciation. A little leaves you pleased. More makes you happy and a lot makes you joyful. And at maximum manifestation you disappear and you become so huge you need nothing–in fact you are so overflowing that it becomes your nature to give.
If you find it hard to write your list at the start then the good news is you’ll benefit more than the rest of us. Now remember–this is a practice. This should happen every workday at least, and always during your quiet time with no interruptions. No music, just the sound of the pen on the paper and the slow creation of the list. This tells your brain what wiring to warm up for your day and it literally makes it more likely that you’ll pay attention to the driver that let you into traffic than you will on the guy that cut you off. Doing the opposite is what makes life feel like hell.
You build billions of new body cells each day and while you keep brain cells for life, you do build close to 1500 neurons a day and that’s what we want working for us. What creates them is you expanding yourself through play or education or experience. Or complaining. The choice is yours. It’s just a matter of: what do you want to be good at?
I’ll be forever thankful to particularly my Aunt Ev who did such a great job of helping me to learn to recognize those qualities in all adults. She also did a great job of explaining some of the challenges of adulthood that too-often kids assume are things about them rather than about adulthood. That was the beginning of my father becoming my hero.
The funny thing is, even though the doctors that night told Mom and I that Dad wouldn’t make it, and even though his head was this weird shiny smooth pumpkin of bruises and tubes, and there was nothing recognizable about his head, I was still entirely sure he would be fine. I literally had zero worry for him—I was more concerned about how my Mom was. But this year—after his last fall, that actually frightened me. That brought time into focus. I try not to think about time, but for Mom and Dad I’ll do anything.
