Elevate Your Mood - Count Your Blessings

If you want more energy, think about what you are grateful for. That isn’t just a fairytale. Researchers from Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Department have concluded after looking at rings of research that the single most way to elevate our moods is to count our blessings. The most effective thing I’ve found is to think about one thing you are really grateful for and then embrace it, lick it, smell it, and feel the feeling of gratitude. Let it come over you like someone is pouring hot warm syrup, and really feel your gratitude. That is when you will feel good!

Make Every Day Thanksgiving!

Of all the people who have ever lived, we are the most fortunate.  Truly.  Some experts estimate that 50 to 70 billion human beings have lived on Earth.  Most lived in conditions we can only term as “life or death.”  A little more than a hundred yeas ago most mothers expected to bury nearly half the children they brought into the world because fatal diseases and accidents stalked every family.  The average marriage lasted fourteen years because one of the spouses died.  Medicine was a primitive art.  Surgery was filthy and insanely painful.  If a common cold became pneumonia, death was virtually certain.  People commonly died from tooth infections.  Few enjoyed the amazing comforts of indoor plumbing until the 1920’s.  And for thousands of years most of the world’s population were exploited by powerful, merciless tyrants who multiplied human suffering by constant war.  Most human beings have never enjoyed human rights, reading or writing, let alone heat or air conditioning.  There is absolutely no doubt—we are fortunate.

But even if we consider our wonderful comforts and advantages, even if we value our personal freedoms to think, act, work and believe according to our own choices, we still surprisingly feel hog-tied by our own frustrations and unmet desires.  We chronically over-focus on what we don’t have, and the greatest threat to our health is our self-induced stress.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  We can feel lasting contentment and large doses of joy.  It is our choice.

Here’s how.

Recent research confirms that many of us are so over-busy and multi-tasking that we have ceased to feel our feelings.  What that means is that positive emotions are now only concepts in our minds rather than authentic emotions.  We say, “I love you” as a closing sentence on every phone call to our spouse, significant other, or children, but it’s simply a verbal habit.  Of course we love them.  We know we do.  We sacrifice for them, we respect them, we even feel empathy when they suffer or succeed, but we no longer feel the genuine emotion of heart grabbing love.  We’re too busy to.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about this problem is to recall your rip-roaring emotions when you first fell in love or held your baby.  There was a time when just being together created moments of intense and deeply satisfying emotions.  You not only knew you loved them, but you felt it big time.  It was like swimming in a warm bath of love.  That’s because you put all your energy into feeling the presence of your beloved.  You held them in unconditional positive regard.  Their flaws and shortcoming were overlooked because you experienced their essential goodness.  That’s the power of being present.  What it takes to feel that way is putting your full energy on the subject of your gratitude.  Whether it is a sunset, a quiet lunch with your beloved, or a noisy dinner with your extended family, be “all in.”  100%, a 1000%.

One habit I have found quite helpful is to practice this kind of presence with deep gratitude first thing in the morning.  Between awakening and getting out of bed I take 3 minutes and take 4 deep breaths.  I try to get the morning oxygen in all the way to my toes.  Then I ask, “What am I most grateful for today?”  I quickly settle on just one thing and then I point all my mental and emotional energy into feeling my gratitude.  I smile.  I try to linger and bring my busy mind back to this singular focus. What I feel in those gratitude-drenched moments is enoughness.  And that feeling of fullness is a kind of spiritual shield that seeks to protect me from creating irrational stress, angry fears and crippling self-doubt.  Well mostly.  Nothing of course works perfectly or all the time.  Yes, I have bad days and disappointments, I still worry and get grouchy, but I also seem to tap into a resilience that is greater than my own smallness.  For that I am very, very grateful.

So what’s the best thing we can do?  Make every day Thanksgiving.