gratitude

Connection and Expansion

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

1271 Relax and Succeed - Connection and expansionWe know it’s good for us to practice gratitude each day. We endeavour to steadily move through our day from observation to observation without layering any words over our connection to whatever or whoever it is that we’re appreciating. But while words themselves are a product of the subject-object world of the ego, the feelings behind them can both be genuine and worthwhile.

What we often do not do as an aspect of gratitude, is to stop to look back to find a very precise example of someone warranting our reconsideration and appreciation. Birthdays make us think of individuals, and things like anniversaries or marriages cause us to think about those events in our own lives, but there is no occasion in society that asks us to slow down and consider to whom we may not have shown the sort of gratitude that would feel as good for us to express as it would for them to hear.

Whether they know how important they are to your life or not, find this unsung person. Find them via social media or through friends, or work or school. Figure out who they are today, and find them and talk to them before Monday. If we’re going to grow by pushing outside of our comfort zone to talk to someone from out of the blue, then it’s nice that it gets to be for someone who’s done so much for us.

1271 Relax and Succeed - Feeling gratitude and not expressing itNo matter how timid we are about grabbing our own lives, surely we can see the value in making a genuine connection of genuine appreciation, because if we won’t even reach and grow for people we like, then our problem isn’t whether we’re good enough, our problem is we’re being too cowardly to ever learn enough to get good.

Free yourself. Any danger is strictly psychological and it lives only as your own opinion inside your head. Your thoughts of isolation do not mean you weren’t born belonging, but to revel in that belonging you need to embrace it with the depths of your soul. Open up. It’s less painful than our masks.

Thank someone. Not for them, for you. It’s in you to do.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.

MoK: Appreciation

Scott McPherson3 Comments

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.

Discoveries in Gratitude

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

1100-relax-and-succeed-interrupt-anxiety-with-gratitudeA feeling of want cannot exist without thoughts of being incomplete. You want this relationship, this person, this thing, this job, this money, this respect, this opinion. But opinions are just thoughts. There is no point in even trying to manage someone’s history, or something as ephemeral as someone’s constantly adjusting perspective. Which means no one’s opinion is truly worth you even thinking about. It would change anyway.

Respect is worth little unless it is self-respect. Lots of people have respected others who committed horribly violent acts, but it is difficult to respect oneself when people either worship or fear you because both of those things are sublimation, not cooperation. They aren’t with you, they just don’t want to be against you. With self respect you can be all alone and you can still comfortably stand up for what you believe in.

Money is a proxy. It isn’t anything more than a storage device for the value of your work or maybe your family’s work (and if you own something, then everyone who works for you volunteers to give you a portion of their daily value). But even if you get lots of it, impressing someone with money or things is mistaking sizzle for steak. They aren’t impressed with you, they are impressed with what you can potentially do for them. Stop doing it and you’re back to being worth nothing to them because it was never you in the first place.

1100-relax-and-succeed-people-were-created-to-be-lovedNo matter how cool a job looks there are always downsides. What thing has only one side? You obviously can’t have an upside if there’s no downside. So famous musicians have to battle with who they can trust, or with drug and alcohol issues, or with always being away from home. Big business people spend a lot of their lives with lawyers and accountants. Little jobs have less power and pressure but they also have less control. Whatever you get you give something up. Managers are less likely to be able to use their status to leave early; they’re more likely to leave late.

Things are things. A new outfit doesn’t change who you are to anyone unless you’re very young, and even then…. Doctors can have their stethoscope and white coat ceremony when they enter med school but they know nothing more after they put it on than before. Lots of people are terrible drivers in beautiful cars. And cars get dated, clothes get dated, fads are group-think and they’re subject to constant change.

Which brings us significant people. When you’re living in ego, thinking your way through life; when someone moves away from you don’t see that as having to do with them, you think that’s about you. Your translation is that if they don’t want to be close to you that there’s something wrong with you, when just as many people leave personal relationships because they don’t feel good about themselves.

1100-relax-and-succeed-awareness-is-like-the-sunFinally, if one particular person doesn’t love you, then that does not leave you unloved, whether it’s a romantic relationship or even your own parents. Unloveable? Seriously. There’s over seven billion of us. There are only so many ways to be, so we would surely find millions who knew experiences like ours and who understood and loved us.

Today’s meditation is easy. If you’re working with a partner or partners then set a time to discuss your findings and then you have from now until then to find five things to be genuinely and significantly grateful for that you’ve previously taken for granted. Five things that you’ll share with your partner(s) at your prescribed time.

Remember, these have to be things you haven’t considered before. The idea is to expand your ability to enjoy life by getting you to see it as more expansive than you’ve previously realised. To do this it can only be you pushing out your own envelope, but it’s a pretty nice task to be asked to find things that please you.

1100-relax-and-succeed-thank-youThey’re always there. Find them. Seriously. If you don’t take this simple task seriously then you aren’t taking changing your life seriously–and that’s fine. But don’t avoid changing it and then complain. Either change it or keep it, but if you keep it then finding five things should extra easy. And remember, this is important. These exercises are all much more meaningful than you ego can appreciate. These are how you get to where you want to be.

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.

Feeling Physically Fortunate

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Look around you. Meditate on the possibilities. Maybe it’s someone on crutches or in a wheelchair. Maybe it’s someone even bigger than you who’s having trouble getting comfortable in their chair. Maybe it’s something hard to see like Crohn’s Disease or or cancer. A large number of the people you walk past and talk to each day are suffering much more than you.

854 Relax and Succeed - Not every disabilityA 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.

Some you can see some you can’t. For whatever flaws you feel it has, your body been the vessel you’ve moved through your entire life inside. It has served you well. You could be a paraplegic–or even a quadriplegic. I know some very happy and productive people without legs. If they can be grateful surely you can.

Consider your favourite physical quality. On a good day you’ll give yourself credit for great hair or a nice ass, cute feet, cute ears, eyes that go on forever… choose the one thing you’ll give yourself compliments on fairly regularly. After you notice how lucky you are to not be down, consider your assets and feel lucky to be up.

854 Relax and Succeed - Appreciate people

I know it sounds incredible but I swear it’s true. Your suffering does not come from the parts of you that you hate, it comes from you hating some parts of you. Likewise, feeling good is when we choose better quality thoughts. So go ahead. Acknowledge your weaknesses. Accept them and then leave them. Why carry them around? That’s neither wise nor productive. Let. Them. Go.

Shift your thinking to what you genuinely admire about yourself and a very huge change will–choice by choice–take place over time. You’ll look back and be amazed at how much better you look and feel and yet all you did was shift from attacking yourself to patting yourself on the back. But to do that you must be kind to you. No one can give you that kindness but you. Do so.

Today’s easy. Notice others and be grateful that you don’t have as much wrong with you as even they have. And if you are going to think about yourself, let it be to think positive thoughts about what you like about you. It’s not egotistical to like yourself. It’s insecure not to like yourself. So don’t be insecure, like yourself. The choice has always been yours.

Stay on top of it and you should be able to weave yourself a pretty nice day. I wish you so much good fortune that you bubble over with it and need to share. 🙂

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.

Rewiring Your Self

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

846 Relax and Succeed - When you discover that all happinessI 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.

Some of you started this exercise already pretty good at appreciating. Some of you are pretty terrible at it. A lot of people basically bitch all day. Every other driver, shopper, boss, co-worker, friend and family member draws out a judgement. Too many of you want too many things to be the way you want them to be rather than loving them the way they are. That’s why you suffer and why the world is robbed of the contribution of your genius.

Your brain makes adjustments every moment and it’s flexibility is stunning. There are functional people walking around with very large and complete components of their brain that are completely missing. A woman in the States has no frontal cortex and yet she functions quite normally. These weekly exercises are there to help you more consciously and intentionally do that rewiring so that it’s easier to make better choices.

846 Relax and Succeed - Stop focusing on how stressed you areIf 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.

If you think a lot of stressful thoughts your body will produce all of the necessary chemistry to create the sensations you experience as stress. Everything from a furrowed brow to a tight stomach to altering your cell receptors. If you always give your body a consistent chemical it will get good at handling that chemical–because that’s what it believes you want. You ask for it you get it.

Start choosing your thoughts instead of having them be just unconscious habits. Your morning exercise absolutely will change your brain. Change your brain change your chemistry, change you chemistry change your life. My body’s brilliant at being happy. My cells can do sad, but it’s not very good at it. Happiness flows through me and I feel elated. Sadness won’t stick. Many of you are the opposite. No problem. Just change that morning habit and over time it’ll change itself. Make gratitude the habit.

846 Relax and Succeed - Each day is a new beginningIt’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?

Do the exercise. If you won’t even do that then you can go ahead and keep saying you want to be happy. Because wanting it is what keeps it at bay. Wanting is always away from you. Appreciation happens within you. Take control over what you do control and you’ll see you don’t need to control the rest.

For my own part in appreciation: thank you for taking the time to read my work. I sincerely hope you’re enjoying the process. I know you will if you do it. So enjoy your day. Intentionally. 😉

peace. s

Scott McPherson is a writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.