Saturday, November 17, 2007

November 2007 Christine's Corner

November is the month of Thanksgiving, a holiday when we gather with our families and friends to eat a festive meal and reflect on the people and things for which we are thankful. Sometimes we even go around the table while we are having Thanksgiving dinner and speak those grateful thoughts aloud. "What are you grateful for this year?" we ask each other. Sometimes the responses come easily, and sometimes they appear less readily, but we almost always find something for which to be grateful - if only for the turkey and stuffing or the afternoon filled with football games.

Gratitude, however, isn't a feeling that most of us consciously cultivate on the other 364 days of the year. All too often we focus on the things we don't have (enough money, enough time) or the things that bother us or feel like burdens. What would happen if instead we paid attention to all that we do have, shifted our focus so as to be grateful for having the experiences that call us to feel different emotions or stretch in a way that pushes our boundaries or normal limits? Some recent scientific studies indicate that not only would we be happier, we would also be healthier.

In their Research Project on Gratitude and Thanksgiving, researchers from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and the University of California at Davis found that participants who made daily lists of things for which they were grateful were more alert, enthusiastic, and optimistic than participants who noted neutral or unpleasant daily experiences. The participants in the "grateful" group also had more energy, exercised more regularly, and were more successful in making progress in their personal goals than their counterparts in the "neutral" and "unpleasant" groups.

Obviously, having more energy and exercising more regularly can contribute to better health, but is our physical health really affected by how optimistic or grateful we are? Studies indicate that it is. Stress is one of the major contributing factors in illnesses that lead to death, like cancer and heart disease, and it is responsible for many doctor visits.

Gratitude can play a large role in reducing stress. In addition, the optimism that is enhanced by gratitude is a powerful immune booster. One study of students undergoing the stress of first-year law school at the University of California found that the students who were more optimistic had higher numbers of the blood cells that protect the immune system than those who were more pessimistic.

Other studies have shown that patients who are already confronting serious health problems, like AIDS or major surgery, tend to have better health outcomes when their attitudes are more optimistic.

While it seems clear that being grateful can enhance not only our mental but our physical well-being, we may well wonder how it is possible to feel gratitude in the midst of our stressful lives. We work hard and long hours, we worry about paying all the bills, we lose the things and people we care about. Despite the myth of the perfect Thanksgiving - and we all recognize that famous Norman Rockwell painting - even the holiday set aside for gratefulness doesn't come without its stresses.

When we gather together with our families, we often fall into old habits of relating, and feelings of hurt, anger, or jealousy can make it difficult to focus on all the love we feel for one another as well as all the things for which we can be grateful.

Many of us are tense for days before a holiday gathering, fearful of those familiar family dynamics. How can we shift our perspective so that Thanksgiving and the other 364 days of the year can really be days of gratitude?

One way to cultivate gratitude is to keep a weekly gratitude journal. Research has shown that people who do so exercise more regularly, report fewer physical complaints, and feel better about their lives and their future prospects.

Another technique is to reframe those situations that seem challenging or burdensome so that we see how meeting the challenge or shouldering the burden might ultimately prove beneficial. Dealing with ill or aging parents, for example, might make us more patient or compassionate.

We might also change the terms in which we think about a particular situation or person. Perhaps a teenager's silence or short replies aren't due to sullenness, but to a feeling that her opinions won't be heard or don't really matter. Opening our minds and broadening the way we choose to perceive our experiences are key traits of individuals who practice gratitude on a larger scale.

Another key to cultivating gratitude is setting aside the time to pause and take care of ourselves. Pausing from our daily busy-ness allows us the opportunity to reflect on how we think about our lives and our experiences, enabling us to see just what in our thoughts or reactions might need reframing, which perspectives might be due for a shift. In the stillness of the pause, we can also see more clearly those things that really matter to us. Once we see those things clearly, our gratitude for them comes naturally.

We can, for example, take the time to get a massage, an activity that allows us both to pause from our busy-ness and to get out of our heads and into our bodies. In addition to being incredibly relaxing, and in itself a powerful stress reducer, massage can make us aware of - and hence grateful for - the physical body that makes it possible for us to move through our days.

Getting a massage frequently makes me aware of and grateful for my feet, those marvelous constructions of tiny bones and muscles and tendons that perform the amazing task of carrying my entire body around day after day.

Pausing, whether in massage or meditation or just simple stillness, gives us clarity. Then instead of focusing on our burdens or our insufficiencies, we can see the richness of our experience just as it is.

As the Sufi poet Rumi writes, "This is enough was always true. We just haven't seen it." Once the richness is seen, the gratitude - and the health benefits it brings - will follow.

~posted by Christine, 4:55 PM