Gratitude

The word that I would love to suggest is...

Gratitude.

Even if things are tough, be grateful for at least one moment of each day.

And if you write them down and keep them in a notebook or a journal, you're going to see some pretty amazing gifts stack up.

Uh, gratitude literally alters the brain.

Gratitude quiets the fear stress centers of the brain.

All right? Gratitude is a path that you can choose to wear in, and it can go from feeling hard to be grateful to being easier to see what there is to be grateful for and to be grateful.

Gratitude also affects longevity.

Gratitude also impacts your sleep.

We also know it affects our physical health.

Research shows gratitude is linked to reduced cortisol.

It also contributes to better cardiac function and better HRV.

Section 64 of The Watchman and Other Poems by L. M. Montgomery Read for LibriVox.org by Lena Marie.

Gratitude.

I thank thee, friend, for the beautiful thought that in words well chosen thou gavest to me.

Deep in the life of my soul it has wrought with its own rare essence to ever imbue me, the gleam like a star over devious ways, to bloom like a flower on the dearest days.

Chapter 9.

The Bull That Proved His Gratitude.

Long ago, the Buddhistat returned to life as a bull.

Now when it was still a young calf, its owner stopped a while in an old woman's house and gave him to her when they settled their account for their lodging.

Really important work without the moral risks attaching to real responsibility.

such was the work you had expected and the chances are ten to one that the work you have actually got is dull monotonous apparently futile any fool could do it though it is exhausting and inconvenient or on the other hand it is while dull and monotonous too exacting for a well-intentioned mediocre brain like yours you don't actually mean that but you try to be modest in short it is not suitable work ax there is not enough suitable work to go round nor the thousandth part of what would be enough unsuitableness is a characteristic of nearly all war work lowering your great powers down or forcing your little powers up to the level of the work offered this too is part of war work again you have to get away from the illusion that you can live a new life and still keep on living the old life everybody as has somewhere been stated possesses twenty-four hours in each day everybody occupies every one of his twenty-four hours you do though you may think you don't if you do not occupy them in labour then you occupy them in idleness if not in usefulness then in futility now idleness and futility are much more difficult to expel from hours which they have appropriated than labour and usefulness are difficult to expel but if war work is brought in something will have to be expelled habits of labour and usefulness are sometimes hard enough to change habits of idleness and futility are still harder if you were previously spending your afternoons in giving and accepting elaborate afternoon teas you will have more trouble in devoting your afternoons to war work than if you had been spending them for example in the pursuit of knowledge it is child's play to abandon the pursuit of knowledge no moral stamina is required but to give up the exciting sociabilities of afternoon tea is a tremendous feat so much so that if you are a votary of this indigestive practice you will infallibly endeavour to persuade yourself at first i can manage the two war work and afternoon teas as well i can fit them in you cannot fit them in at any rate successfully the essence of war work is that it may not be fitted in if it does not mean sacrifice it means naught sacrifice is giving something for nothing you cannot give something and yet stick to it certain persons are apt to buy an article to give away and then are so pleased with the article that they decide to keep it for themselves they thus obtain for a period the sensation of benevolence without any ultimate corresponding sacrifice this is the nearest approach that i know of to giving something and yet sticking to it but it has no relation whatever to war-work axiom if a teacup is full you cannot pour anything into it until you have poured something out the next and the next last illusion to go is a masterpiece of simple-mindedness and yet nearly all who take up war work are found at first to be under its sway it is the illusion that war work being a fine and noble thing ought to change people's natures and dispositions in such a manner as to produce the maximum of co-operating effort with the minimum of friction now the very heart of all war work is the grand and awe-inspiring institution of the committee if you are engaged on war work you are bound to sit on a committee or in default of a committee a subcommittee which usually has more real power than the bumptious and unwieldy body that overlords it and if you are on neither a committee nor a subcommittee then you are bound sooner or later to be called up before a committee or a subcommittee and to be in a position to give the committee or subcommittee a piece of your mind thus your legitimate ambition will somehow be satisfied but let us suppose that you are at once elected to a committee well among the members of the committee are three persons you know miss x mr y and mrs z miss x used to be a mannish and reckless and cheeky young maid mr y used to be an interfering and narrow-minded old maid mrs z used to be nothing in particular you enter the committee-room and you see these three together with a few others who have not a very promising air probably no sight is more depressing than the cordon of faces round the committee-room table you however are not downcast you feel in yourself the uplifting power of a great ideal you are determined to make the best of yourself and of everybody and you are convinced that everybody is determined to do the same but in less than five minutes miss x despite her obvious lack of experience is offering the most absurd proposals she has put her elbows on the table and she is calmly teaching all her grandmothers to suck eggs mr y is objecting to the ruling of the chairman and obstinately arguing against a resolution that has been carried and indeed implying that the committee ought not to do anything at all as for mrs z she has scarcely opened her mouth when the chairman asked her for her opinion she blushed and said she rather agreed and she voted both for and against the first resolution is it conceivable you exclaim in your soul is it conceivable that these individuals can behave so in such a supreme crisis of the nation's history at a moment when the nation has need of every citizen's loyal good-will of every etc etc no they cannot have realised that we are at war and sundry other members of the committee are not much better than the ignoble three indeed your faith in committees is practically destroyed you say to yourself with your blunt vigorous common sense if only the committee would adjourn and leave the whole matter to me i am sure i could manage it much better than they are doing you consider that a committee is a device for wasting time and for flattering the conceit of opinionated fools then mr y becomes absolutely impossible you feel that you are prepared to stand a lot but that there is a limit and that mr y has gone beyond it you are ready to work and to work hard but you cannot be expected to work with people who are impossible you decide to send in your resignation to the chairman at once i hope you will not send it in for at least half the committee are thinking just as you are thinking and one or two of them are thinking these things not apropos of miss x mr y or mrs z but apropos of you and if you are startled at the spectacle of people persisting in being just themselves in war work then the fault is yours and you should be gently ashamed you ought to have known that people are never more themselves than in a great crisis especially when the crisis is prolonged you ought to be thankful that the committee has unscaled your eyes to so fundamental a truth you have realized that we are at war you ought also to realise that it takes all sorts to make a world even a world at war you ought to imagine what would happen if every member of the committee like you resigned because mr y was impossible and thus left the impossible mr y in possession of the table and the secretary axiom the most valorous and morally valuable war work is the work of working with impossible people and may i warn you that you will later on if you succeed as a war worker encounter more terrible phenomena than mr y who at the worst can always be outvoted you will encounter for example the famous and fashionable lady who justifiably relying on human nature's profound and incurable snobbishness will give all the hard work to you and those like you while appropriating all the glory and advertisement for herself and more terrible even than the famous and fashionable lady you will run up against the official mind the official mind is the worst of all obstacles to getting things done and the gravest danger of the war-worker particularly if he attains high rank on committees is the danger of becoming official-minded himself when you have proved that in war work you are a decent human being and you will prove this by sticking to the work long after you are weary of it and by refusing to fly off to something else because it promises to be more diverting and less annoying than your present job then you will part company with the war worker's last illusion namely the illusion that her efforts will meet with gratitude Gratitude is going to be an extremely rare commodity, and it is not a very good thing to receive anyhow.

You see, there will be so few people with leisure to devote to gratitude.

Everybody is or will be war-working.

I mean, I know you've, you've been very vocal about how important it is in your life, but you know, when I, even when I've gone through challenging moments or feeling really disconnected from myself.

Gratitude feels really hard in those moments, like practically.

I could sit there and practice it, but whether I'm really genuinely feeling it, whether I'm getting that beautiful effect, sometimes I feel like I'm a little too distant from that frequency of gratitude that it feels really hard to do.

So is there a role all the time for gratitude or do we need to sometimes do something else to get to that place where we can get the full benefit of practicing

oh wow how special we'll actually touch on i want to touch on more like tech in a sec but And I'm not saying you're not going to be able to upkeep these beautiful rituals when baby comes, but let's just say you've only got time for one.

What is going to be your one non-negotiable?

Gratitude 100%.

And is that like a written practice you do? So

Again.

Gratitude.

Thank you and bye bye.