How Happy Do You Want to Be?

Do you remember the story of the two men who were walking through a pasture and spotted an enraged bull? They instantly darted toward the nearest fence. The storming bull followed in hot pursuit and it was soon apparent they wouldn't make it in time. Terrified, one shouted to the other, "Can you pray, John? We're not going to make it!"

John answered, "I don’t know how to pray."

"You have to!" panted his companion. "The bull is catching up to us."

"All right," agreed John, Then he prayed the only prayer he knew, one he had heard his father pray often at the dinner table: 'O Lord, for what we are about to receive, make us truly thankful.'"

Not a bad prayer, actually, at least in other circumstances. And not a bad attitude about life. But even as important as being truly thankful, it is necessary to act truly thankful.

Italian actor, director, singer-songwriter and poet Roberto Benigni believes in the importance of acting thankful. Benigni won the 1998 Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the film "Life Is Beautiful." In his joy at receiving the honor, he actually danced over the tops of chairs and leaped up on stage, applauding the audience. The effusive Benigni believes that it's a sign of mediocrity when one demonstrates gratitude with moderation. And he is anything but moderate when showing gratitude.

How are you at showing your gratitude? Most of us are not as demonstrative as Benigni, but acting truly thankful can actually help us feel more grateful. 

William Arthur Ward said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” Who would wrap a present and not give it? And once the present is given, how do you feel? The truth is...the more we express our gratitude, the happier we are. For it isn’t happiness that makes us grateful, but gratitude that makes us happy. 

How happy do you want to be?

-- Steve Goodier

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"Thank You!" by Moeez - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

How to Improve Your Vision

Did you know that the English word "thanks" comes from the same root word as "think"? And they not only share a similar background, they are related in another way. It seems the more we think, the more we thank. One woman illustrated how thinking and thanking are related in a visit to the eye doctor.

She complained to her ophthalmologist that, as she grew older, her eyesight was getting worse. He examined her eyes and could not be encouraging about the future of her eyesight. But to his surprise, she did not seem to be upset. She told him all she was grateful for: her deceased husband; her children and their families; her friends; the many years she has enjoyed upon this earth; her vast library of memories. She had done a great deal of thinking about these things. "My eyesight is getting worse," she summarized, "but I'm not going to fret over that."

Her doctor later made this observation: "Her eyesight is poor, but her vision is better than most people." She clearly saw what many never see -- all the good in her life. And she was content.

When we take time to think, and make time to thank, we see more clearly.

It sounds like a good way to improve your vision.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/Bryan Jones

How to Live More Thankfully

 

Image by Hector Landaeta

You'll probably be happier!

A man lay in a hospital bed worried about whether he would live or die. He called his pastor to come pray for him. He told her that if he got well, he'd donate $20,000 to the church.

The pastor prayed and the man eventually DID get well and returned home. But no check came to the church. The pastor paid him a visit.

"I see you're doing quite well now," she observed. "I was just wondering about the promise you made."

"What promise?" he asked.

"You said you'd give $20,000 to the church if you recovered."

"I did?" he exclaimed. "That goes to show you just how sick I really was!"

It is easy to give thanks -- or to show it -- when we feel grateful. But gratitude is not a feeling we can manufacture. Nor are we born feeling especially grateful.

Children don't express much thanks by nature. Conveying appreciation is something we learn. And, here's the good news, we have a lifetime to get better at it.

We teach our children to say thanks and, in time, they develop stronger feelings of gratitude. My children could talk before they were weaned from diapers, but one thing they never said was, "Thank you for changing my dirty diapers, Dad. I know that is a messy job. I appreciate all you and Mom are doing for me." Too bad. Sometimes we deserved a BIG thank you.

Once they became car sick at the beginning of a road trip, and I think they should have written a long thank-you letter to us for cleaning it up. Even though their mother and I spent almost a half hour scrubbing the carpet in a convenience store parking lot at seven degrees below zero (our metric system readers will recognize that as -22 degrees Celsius), they never did said, "Gosh, guys, you're the greatest parents ever! We are SO lucky to be part of this family."

But that's all right. Naturally, we wouldn't expect small children to thank their parents for being parents. And for most people, feelings of gratitude come with empathy as we mature. The more we express thanks, the more gratitude we feel. The more gratitude we feel, the more we express thanks. It's circular, and it leads to a happier life.

And that's the point. People who are generally happier got that way, at least in part, through gratitude. 

Here are three simple steps to help anybody live more thankfully and to respond more authentically.

First, recognize WHEN a thankful response is appropriate. We take for granted too many of the things that we should be giving thanks for.

Second, spend a moment reflecting on how another's thoughtfulness makes you feel. Be intentional about this.

Then third, from a sincere feeling of gratitude, give thanks. Say it. Write it. It doesn't matter. But when you do, you will discover a side benefit – you are becoming a happier person.

-- Steve Goodier

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Un-Thanked People

 

Image courtesy of Stephanie Hofschlaeger

When William Stidger taught at Boston University, he once reflected upon the great number of un-thanked people in his life. Those who had helped nurture him, inspire him or who cared enough about him to leave a lasting impression.

One was a schoolteacher he'd not heard of in many years. But he remembered that she had gone out of her way to put a love of verse in him, and Will had loved poetry all his life. He wrote a letter of thanks to her.

The reply he received, written in the feeble scrawl of the aged, began, "My dear Willie." He was delighted. Now over 50, bald and a professor, he didn't think there was a person left in the world who would call him "Willie." Here is that letter:

"My dear Willie,
I cannot tell you how much your note meant to me. I am in my eighties, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely and, like the last leaf of autumn, lingering behind. You will be interested to know that I taught school for 50 years and yours is the first note of appreciation I ever received. It came on a blue-cold morning and it cheered me as nothing has in many years."

Not prone to cry easily, Bill wept over that note. She was one of the great un-thanked people from Bill's past. You know them. We all do. The teacher who made a difference. That coach we'll never forget. The music instructor or Sunday school worker who helped us to believe in ourselves. That scout leader who cared.

We all remember people who shaped our lives in various ways. People whose influence changed us. Bill Stidger found a way to show his appreciation – he wrote them letters.

Who are some of the un-thanked people from your past? It may not be too late to say, "Thanks."

-- Steve Goodier

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Prescription for Peace

Image by Kate Ter Haar

Many years ago, Dr. A. J. Cronin occasionally prescribed an unusual treatment for some of his patients who were feeling “blue,” “down,” or generally blah. He would insist that for six weeks the patient say, “Thank you” for every kindness and keep a record of it. According to Dr. Cronin, he had a remarkable cure rate.

If you find yourself depressed, please consult your medical doctor. But everyone gets down at times, and sharpening your sense of gratitude can make an important difference in the way you feel. I have observed again and again that people’s day-to-day happiness is not usually found in getting what they want; it comes from appreciating what they have, no matter how little.

Writer Arthur Gordon* used to tell about asking a physician friend of his for the name of the most effective prescription he knew.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” his friend said. “A colleague of mine once had a woman patient who suffered from depression. Got to the point where she stayed at home all the time, listless, apathetic, indifferent to just about everything. The usual medications didn’t seem to help.”

One day this doctor delivered a small package to the woman’s home. “I want you to take what’s in this package,” he said, “and spend ten minutes of every day looking through it at some object in this room.”

In the package there was a strong magnifying glass. The woman faithfully took the prescription.  She began looking through the lens at the warp and woof of the fabric on her sofa. She was amazed at what she saw. Then she examined the veins in a flower plucked from her garden, the color dots in an old photograph, and even the texture of her own skin. In days before close-up photography, she’d never seen the likes of it before. She was amazed and astounded at the brand new world opening up before her eyes.

Perhaps the doctor knew what Abraham Heschel put so well: “The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.” As this woman gazed at her world through a magnifying lens, she saw, in a completely different way, what had been around her all along.

Her sense of wonder gave way to another, more powerful emotion. The physician said that her experience with the lens, more than anything else, was the turning point of her illness. She began to get well because this unusual prescription had aroused within her the most curative of all emotions – gratitude.

Do you practice gratitude? I think you’ll discover that it is no less than a powerful prescription for peace.

-- Steve Goodier

* Daily Guideposts, October 1983 

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Much Obliged

Like most parents, I taught my children to say "thank you" frequently and hoped that giving thanks might become a life habit. After all, silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. But I think that what I hoped to teach them was not simply to say thanks, but to feel it. I believe that thankful people are happy people.

Writer Fulton Oursler used to tell of an old woman who took care of him when he was a child -- a woman who not only expressed her thanks, but felt it. Anna was a former American slave who, after emancipation, was hired by a family for many years.

He remembered her sitting at the kitchen table, her hands folded and her eyes gazing upward as she prayed, “Much obliged, Lord, for my vittles.” He asked her what vittles were and she replied that they were food and drink. He told her that she would get food and drink whether or not she gave thanks, and Anna said, “Yes, we’ll get our vittles, but it makes ‘em taste better when we’re thankful.”

She told him that an old preacher taught her, as a little girl, to always look for things to be grateful for. So, as soon as she awoke each morning, she asked herself, “What is the first thing I can be grateful for today?” Sometimes the smell of early-morning coffee perking in the kitchen found its way to her room. On those mornings, the aroma prompted her to say, “Much obliged, Lord, for the coffee. And much obliged, too, for the smell of it!”

Young Fulton grew up and left home. One day he received a message that Anna was dying. He returned home and found her in bed with her hands folded over her white sheets, just as he had seen them folded in prayer over her white apron at the kitchen table so many times before.

He wondered what she could give thanks for at a time like this. As if reading his mind, she opened her eyes and gazed at the loving faces around her bed. Then, shutting her eyes again, she said quietly, “Much obliged, Lord, for such fine friends.”

Oursler was deeply influenced by Anna’s uncanny ability to always find some reason to be "much obliged." This wise woman taught him a secret that many people have never learned: she taught him how to be happy.

-- Steve Goodier

Image:flickr.com/Gurpreet

The Hand

At first it sounded like a Thanksgiving story, but the more I reflected on it, the more appropriate it seemed for any time of the year. The way I heard it, the story went like this:

Thanksgiving Day was near. The first grade teacher gave her class a fun assignment -- to draw a picture of something for which they were thankful.

Most of the class might be considered economically disadvantaged, but still many would celebrate the holiday with turkey and other traditional goodies of the season. These, the teacher thought, would be the subjects of most of her student's art. And they were.

But Douglas made a different kind of picture. Douglas was a different kind of boy. He was the teacher's true child of misery, frail and unhappy. As other children played at recess, Douglas was likely to stand close by her side. One could only guess at the pain Douglas felt behind those sad eyes.

Yes, his picture was different. When asked to draw a picture of something for which he was thankful, he drew a hand. Nothing else. Just an empty hand.

His abstract image captured the imagination of his peers. Whose hand could it be? One child guessed it was the hand of a farmer, because farmers raise turkeys. Another suggested a police officer, because the police protect and care for people. Still others guessed it was the hand of God, for God feeds us. And so the discussion went -- until the teacher almost forgot the young artist himself.

When the children had gone on to other assignments, she paused at Douglas' desk, bent down, and asked him whose hand it was. The little boy looked away and murmured, "It's yours, teacher."

She recalled the times she had taken his hand and walked with him here or there, as she had the other students. How often had she said, "Take my hand, Douglas, we'll go outside." Or, "Let me show you how to hold your pencil." Or, "Let's do this together." Douglas was most thankful for his teacher's hand.

Brushing aside a tear, she went on with her work.

The story speaks of more than thankfulness. It says something about teachers teaching and parents parenting and friends showing friendship, and how much it means to the Douglases of the world. They might not always say thanks. But they'll remember the hand that reaches out.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: freeimages.com/Viviane Stonoga