It's All About Perspective--Gratitude

Last week, as I wandered around a bookstore, I happened across a book that caught my eye: This Is Not the Life I Ordered. (What is the grammatically correct way to write the name of a book when you cannot underline it?) Ha, I thought. This was, "coincidentally", the day after the worst day of Intern Year. All I had been thinking was that this was not the life I ordered. Now somebody had written a book about it! Fancy that! "50 Ways to keep your head above water when life keeps dragging you down." Even better! This was it--God's life jacket, if you will.

The book is written by four women: An award-winning filmmaker, a best-selling business writer, a groundbreaking journalist, and a U.S. congressperson. These women have been through it all. Successful careers and career failures. Happy marriages, deaths of spouses and affairs. Children and step-children. Being shot. Infertility and miscarriages. You name it, they've probably lived through it. A number of years ago, they started a kitchen table group. It's exactly what it sounds like. They started meeting at least once a month around each other's kitchen tables to survive. They supported each other. They encouraged true honesty and courage. The book is about these meetings and friendships. It describes how to form your own kitchen table group. But more than that, it is filled with quotes and inspiration for how to survive when life seems hopeless. I highly recommend it.

I'll probably be posting a few entries about this book in the coming weeks. Last night and today, however, I was struck by an idea and had to act on it. GRATITUDE. Here is some of the science of gratitude:
*Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, has been conducting scientific research on gratitude and its importance for nearly twenty years, funded by the National Institute of Health. He found that:
*Those who wrote in gratitude journals on a weekly basis also exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives, and were more optimistic than the control group that did not keep the journals.
*Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals over a two-month period compared to those who did not.
*Grateful people reported higher levels of positive emotions and lower levels of depression and stress.

The idea of counting our blessings is nothing new. I'm ashamed to admit, though, that with science to back it up, I am more likely to try it. I have been feeling very ungrateful lately. I've been working on that. But a recent experience made me realize that it's all about perspective. I found that I was judging somebody for complaining about how difficult their life was--How they didn't know if they could go on like this anymore. When I looked at their life, I saw blessing after blessing after blessing. But to them, it was very difficult. I know that if somebody else looked at my life and heard the way that I carry on, goodness! So instead of letting somebody else look at my life and think about all of the blessings that I have, I have decided to do it myself. I am starting a gratitude journal. Abbie helped me pick one out at the store today. I will write in it at least once a day and I will write in it whenever I am feeling sorry for myself. I will write in it whenever I want to say, "Poor me." I know that this won't fix everything, but the attitude adjustment that I've made in myself in the last week has had a profound change in the happiness scale of our days. So this can only help. I won't be posting these things online because they're private, but as inspiration, I'll give a couple for today:

*I'm grateful that I found true love
*I'm grateful that I have a home
*I'm grateful that my children have enough food to eat every day
*I'm grateful that it didn't rain all week like it was supposed to
*I'm grateful for the friends who invited us over for dinner tonight
*I'm grateful that I have a car
*I'm grateful that Alan is not still in medical school
*I'm grateful that I have been able to lose almost 50 lbs
*I'm grateful that I am not depressed
*I'm grateful for brownies