Gratefulness

OK...so I have a post that is not about Madeline but about something I have really been thinking about the past few days. Gratefulness. I think it is really become a lost art in our culture and I am on a mission to fill our home with a big dose of gratefulness. It is so easy to become lost in all that I need to get accomplished during the day that I forget to be grateful. I remember when I was teaching how I really noticed the children that were thankful for the little things and how sad I was and sometimes even mad when children were not even grateful for anything. They always wanted more. I sure hope that my heavenly Father doesn't view me this way. So I am beginning with a nightly thankfulness chat with Madeline before bed each night and hopefully one day when she knows more words or any words she can tell me the things that she is thankful for each night and we can end our day remembering how Our God has blessed us soooo much. I am also starting a thankfulness list that Nick and I will add one thing to each night and then when we are old and gray we can look back and remember the blessings. I tried this once before and it didn't last very long. I figured if I put it on the blog I will have to be consistent. Last night was my first night with the thankful chat with Madeline and she decided that it was a great time to stick out her tongue and make lots of raspberries and spit. We will keep working on this.

Colossians 3:15 (Whole Chapter) from The Message:
Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.


Also, I was googling gratefulness and found this super interesting study published about grateful people....Here is a highlight..


In an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

A related benefit was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment: Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.

A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others). There was no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported in the three groups.

Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.
In a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21-day gratitude intervention resulted in greater amounts of high energy positive moods, a greater sense of feeling connected to others, more optimistic ratings of one’s life, and better sleep duration and sleep quality, relative to a control group.

Now I am off to work on my grateful list!