Distorted Thinking

Distorted Thinking 

“Whether you are an addict or the partner of an addict, faulty beliefs can have a huge impact on how you feel about yourself. As a result, you may have a lifelong history of distorted thinking that perpetuates the addictive process for both you and your partner. When you resort to rationalization and justification, the result is that you may be living in a state of denial. Denial is what you tell yourself so that you won't have to feel pain. You may feel you won't have to deal with your own issues if you focus on people and problems outside of yourself. Distorted thinking keeps you in denial and prevents you from getting the help you need.” (from LifeSTAR Network Beginnings Phase for Partners Workbook 1, written by Dan Gray, LCSW and Todd Olson, LCSW page 13)

Here are further explanations of distorted thinking taken from this website: See if you can recognize when you're thinking is distorted. Begin to challenge your distorted thinking.

 

 *From Thoughts & Feelings by McKay, Davis, & Fanning. New Harbinger, 1981. These styles of thinking (or cognitive distortions) were gleaned from the work of several authors, including Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck, and David Burns, among others.

Gratitude Day 21

Welcome To Day #21 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Can you believe it has been three weeks since this project began?

Have you noticed specific benefits from your gratitude focus?

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — author Melodie Beattie

Do repeat the Gratitude Survey questionnaire at http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ and compare your results with your initial survey response.

This quotation sums up the theme of our project. Do you agree?

“Gratitude is the most passionate transformative force in the cosmos. If you give thanks for five gifts every day, in two months you may not look at your life in the same way as you might now.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach

If you quit somewhere along the way, don't worry, you aren't behind! Gratitude is a life-long project. :)

Gratitude Day 20

Welcome To Day #20 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Tanya here, I substituted another site for the original content of this day. We are almost done with the 21 days of gratitude! I thought after reading all the content from the past 19 days some of you would like to know what the LDS Church has to say about gratitude. The link below is from the official website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

http://lds.org/topic/gratitude/

Action steps for today:

1) Continue your list of 5 things you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal

Gratitude Day 19

Welcome To Day #19 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Welcome To Day #19 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Here is a quotation to ponder.

“When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you, in effect, acknowledge that it is there - in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God; an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered. Therefore never supplicate, Appreciate.” — Neale Donald Walsch inConversations with God, Book 1

Watch this uplifting video about the transforming power of Thank You notes

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7279317n

And continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal

Gratitude Day 18

Welcome To Day #18 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Begin and end each day with appreciation

We began this 21-day even by affirming that the teachers of “The Secret” have emphasized that “gratitude” is a powerful accelerant of the law of attraction.

Today’s message is directly from the “Secret behind the Secret” authors - Abraham-Hicks.

Abraham’s encouragement: Begin and end each day with appreciation

“We want to give you this affirmation: Today, no matter where I’m going, and no matter what I’m doing, and no matter who I am doing it with, it is my dominant intent to look for good feeling things.”

And if we were standing in any of your physical shoes we would put ourselves in bed tonight and we would lie there in an attitude of appreciation.

We would think about this day. We would think about our children. We would think about the earth. We would think about lakes.  We would think about flowers and kittens…

We would think about whatever it is that makes you feel good when you think about it and we would let that be the tone in which we would go to sleep…

And when you awaken, lie in your bed…and reach for the feeling of appreciation that you set in motion before you went to sleep.

Then lie in bed and deliberately appreciate a little more.

Not too long. A minute or two. Lie there and appreciate - don’t force it - just lie there and appreciate…

And before you jump into the day…go to a place and sit deliberately for 15 minutes with the deliberate intention of bringing yourself (through prayer, through mediation, through the quieting of your mind) into alignment with the fullness of who you are

And once you have achieved that feeling - if only for two or three minutes - you have set your day into the most supreme unfolding that is possible.

And when you come out of (prayers and) meditation go right into thoughts of appreciation…

And if you will follow that process for just a handful of days thirty, really, at the outside)

~ you will adjust your set-point of happiness

~ you will change your point of attraction

~ you will get off on the right foot every day of your life experience

and you will begin to discover that your point of attraction has shifted so dramatically that people who know you will begin asking you, ‘what is your secret?’

and you will say ‘I am deliberately setting the tone of everyday before I go to bed the night before and I am awakening into alignment with who I am.

I am starting my day out every day seeing the world through the eyes of (God).

And then say, and ‘I’ve got to tell you, it is a beautiful world.”    Abraham-Hicks, San Antonio, 9/8/07

Action Steps Today:

1) Ponder the following quote below:

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we  have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to  clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

Appreciatively,

Elyse

Gratitude Day 17

Welcome To Day #17 of 21 Days of Gratitude

A Life-Changing Gratitude Assignment.

Martin Seligman, PhD (author of “Authentic Happiness“) is credited as being the founder of the Positive Psychology movement.

Prior to his tenure as President of the American Psychological Association (in 1998), psychology, as a discipline, limited its focus to the disease model of studying dysfunctional behavior.

The message of “Authentic Happiness” is that by identifying the very best in ourselves, we can improve the world around us and achieve new and sustainable levels of authentic contentment, gratification and meaning.

This is how Martin Seligman describes teaching his classes at the University of Pennsylvania:

“I have been teaching psychology courses at the University of Pennsylvania for more than thirty years: introductory psychology, learning, motivation, clinical and abnormal psychology. I love teaching, but I have never experienced more joy than in teaching Positive Psychology for the last four years. One of the reasons is that, unlike the other courses I teach, there are real world assignments that are meaningful and even life-changing.”

Today we invite you to experience the most profound of all the exercises that Dr. Seligman assigns his students.

Today’s action steps:

1) Gratitude Notes

This is how Martin Seligman explains the process:

“Select one important person from your past who made a major positive difference in your life and to whom you have never fully expressed your thanks. (Do not confound this selection with newfound romantic love, or with the possibility of future gain.) Write a testimonial just long enough to cover one laminated page. Take your time composing this; my students and I found ourselves taking several weeks, composing on buses and as we fell asleep at night. Invite that person to your home, or travel to that person’s home. It is important you do this face to face, not just in writing or on the phone. Do not tell the person the purpose of the visit in advance; a simple “I just want to see you” will suffice. Wine and cheese do not matter, but bring a laminated version of your testimonial with you as a gift. When all settles down, read your testimonial aloud slowly, with expression, and with eye contact. Then let the other person react unhurriedly. Reminisce together about the concrete events that make this person so important to
you. (If you are so moved, please do send me a copy at seligman@psych.upenn.edu.)”

2) Dr. Seligman would also encourage you to continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal 

Elyse Hope Killoran
President,  Prosperity from the Inside-Out

Gratitude Day 16

Welcome To Day #16 of 21 Days of Gratitude

“When you start to feel grateful for what you already have, you will start to attract more of the good things — more of the things you can be grateful for.” — Dr. Joe Vitale in “The Secret”

There’s no beating around the bush here.

The law of attraction ensures that what you put out comes back to you.

If you send out energetic messages of scarcity and limitation, the Universe will have no choice but to mirror back to you experiences that leave you feeling lack.

If, on the other hand, you deliberately send out energetic messages of gratitude and abundance, the Universe will fall over itself to drop reflections of wealth (in all forms) at your feet.

So, from a metaphysical perspective, gratitude and appreciation are the wisest investments one can make.
(This is also why financial institutions refer to things that increase in value as “appreciating”.)

Today’s action steps:

1) Do you agree or disagree with this quotation below? “What you put out comes back. The more you sincerely appreciate life from the heart, the more the magnetic energy of appreciation attracts fulfilling life experiences to you, both personally and professionally.” — Doc Childre and Sara Paddison

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal

Enjoying this exploration with you!

Elyse Hope Killoran
President, Prosperity from the Inside-Out
http://www.choosingprosperity.com

Gratitude Day 15

Welcome To Day #15 of 21 Days of Gratitude

(Tanya here - I substituted something else for this day because it was a little weak.)

“Gratitude is the key to open the human heart” - John Demartini from “The Secret”

Showing gratitude for the 'little things' in relationships can boost feelings of happiness and romance, researchers discovered last year. Appreciating daily gestures has the ability to add meaning to the lives of both people and helps the relationship flourish. 

Experts from the University of North Carolina in the U.S. studied how couples behave when responding to nice gestures. They found that simply doing something for somebody else does not automatically generate feelings of gratitude. Instead, people can feel indebted or not notice the exchange at all. In fact, nearly half (48.8%) of the time, thoughtful acts by one partner went undetected by the other partner! (Can you believe that?!! Sad.) The study found that partners recognized kind acts by the other partner only half of the time. Yet those who respond in a positive way and show gratitude can expect greater feelings of satisfaction about the relationship. Their partners feel better, too.

'Men and women with grateful partners felt more connected to the partner and more satisfied with the romantic relationship,' said the authors, writing in the journal Personal Relationships. 'A response of gratitude for "everyday" interpersonal gestures can be a powerful mechanism for relationship growth.' The effects on the relationship were noticed even the day after the gratitude was expressed.

The authors of the study claim that gratitude may be beneficial for relationships that are on the rocks, or in a context where people already have solid and satisfied relationships -- a little gratitude may go a long way toward maintaining the connection. By temporarily changing the perspective on the relationship, everyday gratitude may work as a booster shot for ongoing romantic relationships.

They concluded: 'The little things may make a big difference within the daily lives of individuals in romantic relationships. 'Gratitude may help to turn "ordinary" moments into opportunities for relationship growth, even in the context of already close, communal relations.' So the bottom line is, make sure you are recognizing when your partner or other loved one does small kindnesses for you and make a point of choosing to show gratitude. It will lead to better relationships.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1280775/Gratitude-little-things-boosts-feelings-romance-happiness-research-finds.html#ixzz1YPumJyVE

Today’s action steps:

1) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

2) Make a list of everyday thoughtful things your partner or someone close to you has done for you today and find a way to express gratitude to that person.

Gratitude Day 14

Welcome To Day #14 of 21 Days of Gratitude

 (the above link will take you to the original website for the 21 Days of Gratitude Project)

Welcome To Day #14 of 21 Days of Gratitude
Today we consider the power of expressing appreciation and initiating a chain of positive energy.

“The Word ‘appreciation’ means to be thankful and express admiration, approval or gratitude. It also means to grow or appreciate in value. As you appreciate life, you become more valuable - both to yourself and others.” — Sara Paddison in The Hidden Power of the Heart: Discovering an Unlimited Source of Intelligence


You can explore this concept further in an entertaining video format at: http://www.appreciationmovie.com

Today’s action steps…

1) Make a concerted effort today to express a message of appreciation for everyone with whom you interact.

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal

Appreciating you!
Elyse Hope Killoran
President, Prosperity from the Inside-Out
http://www.choosingprosperity.com

Gratitude Day 13

Welcome To Day #13 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Here is a quotation to ponder.

“If you would stop analyzing everything and just look for things to appreciate; in other words, if you could just decide to play that game, look for things to appreciate, you would live happily ever after.” — Wisdom of Abrahamhttp://www.abraham-hicks.com

I ALWAYS FIND WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR …

… so instead of looking for reasons to feel bad, I’m always looking for things that make me feel fabulous, looking for things to rock my world, looking for things to surprise and thrill me, looking for things to appreciate greatly, looking for ways to make everything fun, looking for even more reasons to flow my love. ~ from the author of 500 Confessions

Gratitude Day 12

Welcome To Day #12 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Here is a quotation to ponder.

“…For example, many people are waiting for prosperity. It cannot come in the future. When you honor, acknowledge, and fully accept your present reality - where you are, who you are, what you are doing right now - when you fully accept what you have got, you are grateful for what you have got, grateful for what is, grateful for Being. Gratitude for the present moment and the fullness of life now is true prosperity. It cannot come in the future. Then, in time, that prosperity manifests for you in various ways.” — from The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle

For more on the topic of staying in the present moment, here is an excerpt from The Screwtape Letters,Chapter 15, by C.S. Lewis. If you are unfamiliar with this book, it is a series of letters written by a devil named Screwtape to his apprentice devil named Wormwood regarding the best way to destroy the soul of a man whom they call their "patient". When the devil refers to the "Enemy" he is talking about God. You can find this complete book  free online here: http://www.freebooks2u.com/fantasticfiction/The-Screwtape-Letters.html  

"The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present - either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

"Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity . . . It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time - for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.  . . . Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.

"To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too - just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future - haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth - ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other - dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We [the devils] want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.
Are you heaping your present gifts to be wasted on the altar of the future?
Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

If you want even more awesome goodness about living in the present moment, I highly recommend that you watch this TED talk 

http://www.ted.com/talks/srikumar_rao_plug_into_your_hard_wired_happiness.html

Gratitude Day 11

Welcome to Day #11 of 21 Days of Gratitude   

(Today's post is a compilation from the original 21 Days of Gratitude Project and other additional websites.)

Today we invite you to focus on a wonderful way that you can use “gratitude” to activate your body’s natural relaxation response.

Savor: To appreciate fully; enjoy or relish.

Or, another way of stating it, Mindfulness + Gratitude = Savoring

The choice to slow down, to “savor” something, must be made consciously.  But–once you do–the benefits become very apparent.

You see - stress and happiness cannot co-exist.

Savoring (from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2011/five-pathways-to-happiness/)
"This is “being in the moment, smelling the roses and tasting your coffee,” Siegel said. It’s savoring everyday moments. Mindfulness helps us learn how to savor situations.
Mindfulness involves “training the mind to be more in the present moment,” and to “be open to whatever is happening each moment,” according to Siegel, who’s also a mindfulness expert and author of The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems.

savoringpresent participle of sa·vor (Verb)

Verb:

Taste (good food or drink) and enjoy it completely. Enjoy or appreciate (something pleasant) completely, esp. by dwelling on it.

More info »Merriam-Webster - The Free Dictionary

In fact, mindfulness supports each pathway to happiness. Many people have a narrow definition of mindfulness, such as you must banish all thoughts from your mind and become a blank slate. But being mindful is as simple as bringing your attention to walking, instead of continuing to get lost in thoughts about your to-list and what happened yesterday, Siegel said.

This is a skill that you can practice with various exercises. “The same way you can develop physical fitness, you can develop psychological fitness,” Siegel said. Mindfulness exercises help people step out of your thoughts and be fully engaged in the here and now. You can download or play many meditations that can help you to develop mindfulness on Siegel’s website.



According to recent research, we spend almost 47 percent of our time “mind-wandering,” or having thoughts about something other than what we’re currently doing. And this makes us unhappy.
“In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged,” said Matthew A. Killingsworth, one of the study’s researchers, in a statement.

Even something as tedious as shoveling snow can make us feel happy, if we’re fully engaged in it, (savoring) Siegel said. In the same way, something as pleasant as talking to a friend, if your mind is wandering, won’t make you happy."

So, as soon as you find yourself “savoring” something (anything), you have shifted your energy in a powerfully positive way.

Action Steps for this week:

1) We’d invite you to make a commitment to yourself that, a half-dozen times over this coming weekend, you will bring yourself into present moment awareness while you look for opportunities to “savor.”

~ Savor the beauty in the sights aroung you.
~ Really pay attention to the sounds in your environment.
~ Be mindful regarding the family rituals that are most meaningful to you and/or create new ways for your family to relax and savor time together.

As Bonnie Snyder of http://www.serenitypathways.com explains, “Happiness comes from focusing in the moment. That is the magic of savoring.”


2) Mindfulness + Gratitude = Savoring

3) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

Elyse

Gratitude Day 10

Welcome To Day #10 of 21 Days of Gratitude 

(the above link will take you to the original website for the 21 Days of Gratitude)

Advanced Appreciation
On Day 8 we suggested that, in addition to your daily gratitude journaling in your Gratitude Journal, you also begin playing “The Appreciation Game”.

And we promised that we would reveal more about the benefits of appreciation in one of this week’s posts.
Let us begin with this quote:

“Appreciation is a powerfully magnetic energy that helps you see the wider picture faster. As you appreciate, you see more and understand more. On an energy level, it brings intuitive breakthroughs and helps you realize God is within you. Appreciation magnetizes you to the Universal flow. When you sincerely appreciate what you have in life, you magnetize more of your heart’s desires. Mathematically speaking, if people spent half as much time appreciating what they have as they do complaining about what they don’t have, life would have to get better.” — Sara Paddison in The Hidden Power of the Heart: Discovering an Unlimited Source of Intelligence



This is why we adore playing “The Appreciation Game.”  (Did you give it a whirl yourself yet?)
There are numerous benefits of this game:

1) When you focus on aspects that you appreciate, you shift the energy around the thing that you are appreciating in a positive upward spiral.

2) You’ll also gain practice and strengthen your “appreciating” muscles (so that you’ll experience  the energy of “gratitude” and “appreciation” more naturally and more often.)

3) In addition, you’ll simply feel better — and that energy will expand into other areas of your life.
And, if that is not enough…

4) The energy of appreciation can also be used as a tool for transformation.
(Here we are moving into metaphysical territory - but stay with me for the logic of this…)
“When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears.” — Anthony Robbins

Today we have an advanced “appreciation” exercise for you so that you can discern the transformative power for yourself.

Today when you play the Appreciation Game (after you journal in your Gratitude Journal) we want to encourage you to also begin playing “The Appreciation Game” in a new way…

Today you will write three sentences to apply appreciation in three different ways.

Sentence 1: “What I like about _____ is…” regarding a situation (person, experience, or opportunity) that is going well for you. (Remember - what you focus on will expand.)

Sentence 2: “What I like about _____ is…” regarding a situation (person, experience, or opportunity) that you would like to see show up for you in a new, bigger way. (This way you will be sending out positive, expectant energy in advance around a topic that is important to you.)

For example: if you are wanting to attract more money, focus on the positive aspects of the experiences of abundance that you have right now. If you are wanting to develop new nurturing and healthy friendships, focus on the positive aspects of all of the wonderful friends you have had in the past (only their positive qualities), focus on the positive aspects of the people in your life right now (love surrounds you) and find positive aspects of all the new people you meet. This will create a vacuum that the Universe will have to fill.

Sentence 3: “What I like about _____ is….” regarding a situation (person, experience, or opportunity) that is NOT going well for you so that you can turn the tides and begin the creation in a positive direction.

Unleash the transformative power of appreciation today.



Elyse Hope Killoran
President,  Prosperity from the Inside-Out

Gratitude Day 9

Welcome To Day #9 of 21 Days of Gratitude

(the link above will take you to the original website)

A Testimonial for Gratitude by Max Wellspring

‘If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.’ — Meister Eckhart

During any given day what do you focus on with your thinking? The average person thinks about 15,000 thoughts per day and anywhere rom 80% to 90% of those thoughts are the same ones day in and day out. What would happen then if we consciously began to focus those thoughts on being thankful, even when life is challenging?

... simply being thankful without attachment to outcome makes you incredibly magnetic and dissolves any resistance to the steady and unrestricted flow of what you want in your life. In fact, one of the most powerful ways of expressing gratitude is to have the faith to be thankful for what you want as if you already had it…with a deep knowing that what you want is already given... That which you want is seeking you. When we are aware of this, thanking (our Higher Power) should be the first thing we do - rather than the last.

In Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Friendship with God, it says that “gratitude can be the fastest form of healing.” Just remembering to be thankful in the moment can shift or pivot the emotions of fear, anger, frustration, depression, or sadness to a lighter feeling state. Even more profound healing can occur when we have the courage to be grateful for even the worst that happens. To no longer see your life circumstances as a problem, to see every person and every situation as a gift and as guidance from (God) is to step through the doorway to deep compassion for yourself and others. With this perspective, it would be impossible to believe that you are separate, alone or a victim. You are powerfully connected... Life becomes an adventure in which everything is a miracle to be celebrated.

Finally, just to know these principles is not enough. Actually living and breathing gratitude ‘walking the talk of it’ takes it from just another intellectual concept and makes it come alive in you. In her book, Simple Abundance, Sarah Ban Breathnach felt that, without gratitude, all the other benefits of simplicity, order, joy, prosperity, beauty and harmony “would not bloom and flourish.”

The results of a study on gratitude http://www.acfnewsource.org/religion/gratitude_theory.html, indicated that “…daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. Additionally, the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress, was more likely to help others, exercised more regularly and made more progress toward personal goals. According to the findings, people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved. The researchers also noted that gratitude encouraged a positive cycle of reciprocal kindness among people since one act of gratitude encourages another.”

So now that we know all of the benefits of gratitude, I invite you to be grateful whenever and wherever you can. Choose to have a good portion of your 15,000 thoughts today be focused on thanksgiving. Bless your life and it will bless you. This is Grace.

By Max Wellspring http://www.thewellspringsolution.com

Today’s action steps:

1) Listen to this guided meditation on Gratitude with Dr. Deepak Chopra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIXIwdhOmSM (2:43 minutes long) 

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

Choosing Gratitude!

Elyse

YouTube - Videos from this post

Gratitude Day 8

Welcome To Day #8 of 21 Days of Gratitude

(the link above will take you to the original website where this post was taken from)

I promised that I would be blending information from hard sciences along with insights from metaphysics in our daily gratitude messages.

With this in mind, can you discern who (a scientist or a spiritual philosopher) might have said the following?

"You have — within you — the fuel to thrive and to flourish, and to leave this world in better shape than you found it. Sometimes you tap into this fuel - other times you don’t. But the sad fact is that most people have no idea how to tap into this fuel or even recognize it when they do. Where is this fuel within you?

You tap into it whenever you feel energized and excited by new ideas.
You tap into it whenever you feel at one with your surroundings, at peace.
You tap into it whenever you feel playful, creative, or silly.
You tap into it whenever you feel your soul stirred by the sheer beauty of existence.
You tap into it whenever you feel connected to others and loved.

In short, you tap into it whenever positive emotions resonate within you."

Would it surprise you to learn that the mission statement above is copied directly from the web site for “The Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill”? (Site: http://www.unc.edu/peplab )

Purpose statement for the Lab:

“Our goal is to uncover the universal recipe for human flourishing and to give this recipe as a gift to the world. Our science to date tells us that genuine positive emotions may in fact be the single most important active ingredient in this recipe for flourishing. When this ingredient is lacking, or in poor supply - people get stuck. They lose their freedom of choice. They become stagnant and painfully predictable. But when this ingredient is in ample supply - people take off. They become generative, creative, resilient, ripe with possibility and beautifully unpredictable.

Obviously, as we have emphasized over and over again in this 21 day project, “gratitude” is a feel-good emotion.

The more that you can consciously induce the emotional experience of “gratitude” the better off you will be - as far as health, relationships and business success.

In “Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier“, Robert Emmons Ph.D. even goes as far as to say,

“Happiness can add as much as nine years to one’s life expectancy. What about net worth? A longitudinal study of college students found that happiness levels in college predicted income sixteen years later. The most cheerful students earned $25,000 more per year than their most dour classmates.”

Hopefully, sharing this information today has served to reinforce your commitment to the 21-day gratitude practice.

So, in addition to your daily gratitude journaling, today we want to encourage you to also begin playing “The Appreciation Game.”

The Appreciation Game:

The Law of Attraction guarantees that we will draw toward us the energetic equivalent of what we are sending out. Today, make a game of finding positive aspects of the people, opportunities and events in your life. Begin the game by stating “What I like about _____ is….” and let your imagination run wild.

In the comments section below, write three elongated sentences that begin with the phrase: “What I like about _____ is….”

“Appreciate anything - even if it seems silly. Look around you for something to appreciate. Look at a lamp and appreciate Thomas Edison. Look at the carpet and be glad it’s not cement. Look at a chair and be happy you don’t have to sit on the floor all the time. Appreciate yourself for trying to appreciate. Anything can be appreciated.” — Doc Lew Childre

We’ll reveal more about the benefits of “appreciation” this week.

Appreciating you!

Elyse Hope Killoran
President,  Prosperity from the Inside-Out

Gratitude Day 7

Welcome To Day #7 of 21 Days of Gratitude 

(click this link to go to the original source of this post)

Let’s start this week off with high energy.

Something fun, playful and a bit silly.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9z2ELaBVJY (3:20)

Action steps for today:

1) Can you really get into the energy of the Gratitude Dance?
Do you have enough child-like openess to try it for yourself? Can you
share the video with others and spread the message of happiness and
joy in the moment?

Share your comments by replying to this email.

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for.

Elyse Hope Killoran

President,  Prosperity from the Inside-Out
http://www.choosingprosperity.com

Gratitude Day 6

Welcome To Day #6 of 21 Days of Gratitude

(click this link to go to the original source of this post)

Proactive Gratitude

Do you want to feel good, live a meaningful life and be abundant?

Laura King, a University of Missouri psychologist, says “Quit reading self help books and start helping others.”

Positive Psychology researcher, Keitko Otake and her colleagues, asked participants in a study to keep track of every act of kindness they did for a week. After one week the kindness group felt a boost in happiness and were much happier than the control group.

If you want to receive a tremendous dose of positive energy, challenge yourself to see how many acts of “proactive gratitude” or spontaneous acts of kindness you can do in a week?

These are the small things. Not what you can buy but what you can you do to help and support others. Not the things you feel obligated to do but the things you choose to do with an open heart.

Today’s action steps:

1) Keep track of the small things you do for others for the next week.

Share your comments by replying to this email.

2) For inspiration, visit the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation at:
http://www.actsofkindness.org/

3) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for.

Appreciatively,

Elyse

Gratitude Day 5

Welcome To Day #5 of 21 Days of Gratitude

Today's post is a substitution for the original Day 5 from the 21 Days of Gratitude Project. The content comes from:  http://www.sedonameditation.com/GratitudeAttitude.html  and focuses on how gratitude brings us back into alignment with the present moment. I am really happy I found this article because I've been looking for something specific about gratitude and the present moment. Enjoy!

Cultivating the Attitude of Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

It turns what we have into enough, and more.

It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity.

It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.

Gratitude makes sense of our past,

brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

 - Melody Beattie, author of Codependent No More.

When you're feeling grateful, your mind is clear, you have a sweeter relationship to the universe and its creator, and you become more aware of the big picture. The world becomes a friendly place to live. Every moment offers an opportunity for thanks. And every "thank-you" can return you to the present moment (another way to become present to what is REALLY going on.)

Keep coming back to present moment awareness

Every moment offers an opportunity for thanks. And every "thank-you" can return you to the present moment. Gratitude practice for me is about letting go of thinking and welcoming in the present moment. Accepting this moment as it is, and knowing that everything is happening for your evolution is a great practice too. “Faith is born of gratitude,” says Dr. Wattles, “ The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith.”

You can also practice welcoming the present moment. Receiving. Every moment, every morning, every evening, and every meal is an opportunity to say thank you. A formal prayer isn’t required - easily bring your attention on what you’re grateful for in the moment, it can be a touchstone to the miracles of life that might have gone unnoticed. I often say thank you to the universe, the creator, and its every thing that created this moment. I appreciate the abundance that is present my life. That makes me feels good. 

Keep up the gratitude practice even when you don’t feel particularly grateful

When life is difficult and when you feel sorrow, great anxiety, or if you are dealing with a difficult relationship, choosing to be grateful can transform your perspective, even for a few moments, to one of appreciation and contentment for all that is: both the wonderful and the frustrating. Scientists have found that feeling grateful produces the endorphins in your brain, the same chemicals that reduce stress, lessen pain, and improve your immune functions.

Being grateful puts you in a totally different mindset and energy level, and enables you to reestablish your connection to your source, your spirit. It is impossible to be grateful and unhappy or in fear at the same time. The negativity and anger you had felt begins to dissipate. Peace and possibility envelope you. You can take a deep breath. The struggle stops and your heart calms. An attitude of gratitude and appreciation can trump negative emotions every time. Thank you.    

- Written by Sarah McLean

For today: Focus on the present moment by writing down 5 things you are grateful for today

About the author: Along with her 22 year meditation practice, Sarah McLean has explored world spiritual and cultural traditions: she's been a 2-year resident in a Zen Buddhist monastery, lived in an ashram in India, taught English to Tibetan Buddhist nuns, bicycled along the silk route through Pakistan, meditated in temples in Thailand and Japan, and trekked the Golden Triangle in Asia. Sarah McLean is passionate about teaching and sharing what she’s discovered about the modalities of mind/body health, self awareness and her spiritual journey.  Endorsed by Deepak Chopra and featured in The New York Times, Sarah is the founding director of the Sedona Meditation Training Company, where she teaches meditation and leads meditation retreats.

Read more articles by Sarah McLean

Gratitude Day 4

Welcome to Day #4 of the 21 Days of Gratitude

I am substituting something else I found from another website for Gratitude Day 4. Here is the link where I got it from:  http://www.iamthankful.com/  Check out this website for lots of free stuff: online gratitude journals, ecards, gifts, postcards, etc.

“Of course it’s easy to feel thankful when things go smoothly and life just handed you a blessing” says founder Damaris Pierce. “But faced with our daily challenges, we don’t know how on Earth we can feel grateful in the midst of debt, depression and complete overwhelm. It literally comes down to practice. Very few people go to the gym simply to be able to bench press 100 lbs, but rather to have energy and muscle strength to pick up the kids and the groceries, do the yard work and maybe not suck wind after climbing two flights of stairs.
Practicing Gratitude is the workout for our soul: repeatedly shifting our awareness towards the blessings of our lives enable us to not dwell on how someone has done us wrong or how life has supposedly handed us the shorter end of the stick. If you can condition yourself to look at the brighter side of life, it will only get brighter – especially while things don’t go your way!
So, make Gratitude your daily practice so that you will have the thankfulness muscle that lets you see the light no matter what life hands you. Today is the best time to start flexing that muscle!”

Action Steps for today:
1) Practice flexing your gratitude muscles today by shifting your awareness toward the blessings of your life, especially when things are not going as well as you would like.2) Continue your daily list of 5 things you are grateful for.

Gratitude Day 3

From: http://21daysofgratitude.com/index.php?paged=2

Welcome to Day 3 of the 21 Days of Gratitude 

Positive Psychologists Prove: Gratitude Is the Best Approach to Life

The results of a study on Gratitude (Gratitude and Thankfulness by Robert A. Emmons, University of California, Davis, and Michael E. McCullough, University of Miami) shows that a daily focus on gratitude leads to:

~ higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism & energy
~ lower depression
~ decreased stress

along with an increased likelihood of:

~ helping others
~ exercising regularly and
~ making greater progress towards personal goals.

In addition, the findings reveal that people who feel grateful are also more likely to feel loved.

(Review highlights of this research in the new book “Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier” and at: (http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/)

The findings led investigator Robert Emmons to this conclusion:

“Our groundbreaking research has shown that grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness and optimism and that the practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness.”

“So gratitude is a key to happiness, as I will argue from a scientific angle. And happiness is a good thing. An implicit assumption that many of us hold is that happiness depends on happenings - by what happens in our lives. We believe that success in life - whether the boardroom or the bedroom - makes people happier. Yet a recent review of the scientific literature on happiness revealed that happiness yields numerous rewards for the individual and precedes these outcomes. This means that happiness makes good things happen. It actually promotes positive outcomes. The benefits of happiness include higher incomes and and superior work outcomes…larger social rewards…more activity, energy, and flow…better physical health, and even longer life.”

Today’s action steps:

1) Consider the information above and let it percolate within you. Is gratitude more powerful than you had first thought?

Share your comments by replying to this email.

2) Continue your daily list of 5 things that you are grateful for in your Gratitude Journal.

With joy and wonder,

Elyse