changed the prompt, blaming my brain stem…

Name ten things you are grateful for

I read a book about the magic of gratitude. What a perfect month to have this gifted to me. I read it on the train from SD to SLO and I’ll probably read it again while I’m here . I want to remember the many good suggestions. Maybe it’s a study guide for life.

I’ve never used the term ‘magic’ in conjunction with gratitude before, I’m glad to be introduced to an old subject with a new twist.

Gratitude can change your life? Daily exercises in saying thank you, feeling thankful, being grateful, will change the way our brains work. I believe this.

If we get into the practice of looking for positive things and feeling grateful for them our brains will gradually shift to sorting and sifting and seeking positives. Similar to when you want or buy a certain brand of car, you start to see them everywhere. We recently got a white jeep, even before it was ours, it seemed like everyone owned a jeep, mostly white ones. This happens because of a part in our brains called the reticular activator. Its role is to pay attention to some things while ignoring others. It’s a primitive region in our brainstem that regulates sleep, awareness, even fight or flight. It decides what we can sleep to (the sound of traffic if we are used to it) and what will wake us up ( a crying baby). It is constantly looking for what seems important and ignoring what doesn’t.

The fun side of knowing this for me, is that I can program my RAS on purpose. Most brain things happen automatically so to have some real time control is interesting. I know I have done this while shopping, while designing, while staging.

So now it’s been suggested to actively look for things in a day to be thankful for. Minimum ten, choose a daily favorite, look back in time for some, then imagine things working out perfectly and feeling grateful in the future. Intentions wrapped in gratitude? I love that.

It’s not that I’m not already thankful, the idea is to amplify my attention to it. (I’m sure there were just as many white jeeps on the road before one came into my life). This has already been a magical month full of things that I’m beyond grateful for. How can it get better than this?!

Well, I guess I’ll program my recticular activating system to search for more magical moments of gratitude and see what happens…