True and Useful™

Thanks-o-meter.com

I invite you to check out Thanks-o-meter.com.  This site is trying to reflect the positive things that people do each day. You can submit what you are thankful for, share a story, and read what others are saying "thank you" for.

In these trying times, Thanks-o-meter.com is a place to focus on the positive aspects of life.  Can you make it though a day or week without someone smiling and saying hello? Opening a door for you, letting you merge into traffic, offering to help, or sharing some of their wisdom?

These may not be the sort of things which draw much attention.  They probably are not news-worthy.  Yet, they are vital to the fabric of our society.  It's these little things that give us a sense of community.

Have you had someone do something truly exceptional for you?  Have you been rescued, mentored, or impacted in a positive way by someone?  Thanks-o-meter.com is your forum to share a story of what others have done for you.  When others read these stories, they are reminded of the kind, generous, and courageous people in the world.

Thanks-o-meter.com aggregates these gestures and presents them in a way that reminds us how good it feels to interact with courtesy, respect, and selflessness. 

What Was Told, That by Rumi

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

by Jalalu'l-din Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks 

A Gratitude List

If there was ever a time to cultivate gratitude, it’s now. Focusing on what each of us has to be grateful for seems like a viable antidote to the daily news of lost jobs, lost houses, lost investments and lost dreams. If you are suffering from the current financial meltdown or worried that its effects may soon arrive on your doorstep, try creating a gratitude list and leaving it somewhere prominent as a daily reminder to keep life in perspective. My point is not to make light of the challenges many of us are facing, but rather to balance our trials and pains with a healthy dose of appreciation.

Suggestions for a Gratitude List:

• A positive significant relationship
• Children to remind you what really matters
• Close and loving family
• Good and loyal friends
• Good health
• A sense of humor
• Savings or a credit line to fall back on
• A job, job prospects or prospective clients
• Enough food to fill your belly
• Exercise to relieve stress and keep you fit
• Nature in all its beauty
• Entertainment, sports and/or games to escape the gloom and doom
• Moments of joy and delight to counter moments of anxiety
• Love in all its forms

I encourage you to take the time to create your list and keep it close to calm your mind and warm your heart, especially when events around you seem overwhelming and almost impossible to bear.

~ A.G.R

Gratitude: try it, it's good for your health

Thanksgiving is one day set aside for giving thanks, but researchers are finding that a daily dose of gratitude promotes health, happiness and social relationships. Researchers are finding that gratitude is a key element of human well-being. It’s getting increasing attention from psychologists, especially those within the growing movement known as positive psychology, which studies well-being. They are finding that grateful people are optimistic and energetic and deal better with stress and illness. Gratitude, in short, can make you happier.

Socially, gratitude builds connections. When parents teach their children to say thank you, they are not only teaching good manners, but also fundamental ways of getting along with other people. While gratitude is a new subject for researchers, it’s a foundational part of all the world’s religions. Sacred scriptures teach gratitude, and religious prayers of thanksgiving reinforce an attitude of appreciation for what one is given.

Gratitude crosses religious and cultural boundaries. It is both a theological and social virtue. Part of contemporary interest in it is scientific; it is a “prosocial” behavior that lubricates human relationships. Recent research has also pointed to mental and physical health benefits for those who make a habit of “counting their blessings.” Yet gratitude is an age-old, simple practice that requires no special equipment and little training to make it into a habit.

Art (available as wallpaper) by Philipp Winterberg

Quote of the Week

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder."

~ G.K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936)
was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century

Highlights from a Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness

Dimensions and Perspectives of Gratitude
Co-Investigators: Robert A. Emmons, University of California, Davis
(contact: raemmons@ucdavis.edu; 530.752.8844)
Michael E. McCullough, University of Miami
(contact: mikem@miami.edu; 305.284.8057)

Gratitude is the “forgotten factor” in happiness research. We are engaged in a long-term research project designed to create and disseminate a large body of novel scientific data on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its potential consequences for human health and well-being. Scientists are latecomers to the concept of gratitude. Religions and philosophies have long embraced gratitude as an indispensable manifestation of virtue, and an integral component of health, wholeness, and well-being. Through conducting highly focused, cutting-edge studies on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its consequences, we hope to shed important scientific light on this important concept. This document is intended to provide a brief, introductory overview of the major findings to date of the research project. For further information, please contact Robert Emmons. This project is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

We are engaged in two main lines of inquiry at the present time: (1) developing methods to cultivate gratitude in daily life and assess gratitude’s effect on well-being, and (2) developing a measure to reliably assess individual differences in dispositional gratefulness.

Gratitude Interventions and Psychological and Physical Well-Being

• In an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).
• A related benefit was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment: Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.
• A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others). There was no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported in the three groups.
• Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.
• In a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21-day gratitude intervention resulted in greater amounts of high energy positive moods, a greater sense of feeling connected to others, more optimistic ratings of one’s life, and better sleep duration and sleep quality, relative to a control group.
• Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families (Froh, Sefick, & Emmons, 2008).

A Simple Thanksgiving Prayer

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.

Buddha

Prayer for the Great Family

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day—
        and to her soil: rich, rare and sweet
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing, light-changing leaf
        and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind
        and rain; their dance is in the flowering spiral grain
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and silent
        Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
        clear spirit breeze
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
        freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
        self-complete, brave and aware
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
        holding or releasing; streaming through all
        our bodies salty seas
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
        trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
        bears and snakes sleep— he who wakes us—
                            in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Great Sky
        who holds billions of stars— and goes yet beyond that—
        beyond all powers, and thoughts
        and yet is within us—
        Grandfather Space.
        The Mind is his Wife.
                            so be it.

                                                        after a Mohawk prayer

Gary Snyder, Turtle Island

New Directions, New York, 1974, pp. 24-25

Thanksgiving Blessing

I’d like to take time during this Thanksgiving week to express my deep gratitude to all who have taught me what I know and helped shape the person I’m becoming. I bow to the divine in all of you - family, friends, associates and teachers - and wish you the blessings of joy, love, health, peace and perfect expression.

Quote of the Week

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”

~ Richard Dawkins