Let the Gratefulness Overflow Into Blessing

Let the Gratefulness Overflow Into Blessing

This week's column's title comes from one of my favorite videos. We have shared it in this column before, as it speaks so eloquently about the true meaning of Thanksgiving. 

The video, which focuses on nature, beauty, and gratitude, brings the stunning photography of Louie Schwartzberg together with the spoken words of Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast. Brother David invites us to pay attention, really pay attention to the simple gifts and blessings of life that can be so quickly be taken for granted. He points out that paying attention to the wonder of nature and the wonder of the people we encounter in our life is the basis for authentic gratitude. We could not agree more.

You can view the video HERE:  If you want to read along as Brother David speaks, the text of his words follows. His narration is spectacular, and so we highly recommend listening to him recite these words.  

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and in the words of Brother David, "May your gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.” 

  “You think that this is just another day in your life. It's not just another day. It's the one day that is given to you - today. It's given to you. It's a gift. It's the only gift that you have right now. And the only appropriate response is gratefulness. 

  If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is. If you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well. 

  Begin by opening your eyes, and be surprised that you have eyes you can open to that incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for our pure enjoyment. Look at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment, with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather, and even with the weather we don't think of all the many nuances of weather. We just think of "good weather" and "bad weather." 

  This day, right now, with its unique weather, may be a kind that will never exactly in that form come again. The formation of clouds in the sky will never be the same as it is right now. Open your eyes. Look at that. 

  Look at the faces of people whom you meet. Each one has an incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom. Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors. We all go back so far.

  And in this present moment on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations, and from so many places all over the world, flows together and meets you here like a life-giving water, if you only open your heart and drink. 

  Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us. You flip a switch, and there is electric light. You turn a faucet, and there is warm water, and cold water, and drinkable water, a gift that millions and millions in the world will never experience. 

  So these are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to which you can open your heart. 

  And so I am wishing you will open your heart to all these blessings and let them flow through you. Know that everyone you will meet on this day will be blessed by you, just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch, just by your presence. 

  Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. Then it will really be a good day.”

Words by Brother David Steindl-Rast

**Please note that we will be taking a week off as we travel for Thanksgiving. This column will resume in two weeks.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they talk more about the connection between gratitude and well-being. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app, and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

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Grateful Living

Grateful Living

Grateful living is a beautiful prescription for how to live one's life. It is also the name of a nonprofit organization that we recommend you learn more about, a timely recommendation in this month where we focus on being thankful.

Grateful Living's mission statement, which you can find on their website www.grateful.org is worth reading slowly: "Grateful Living is a global nonprofit organization offering online and community-based educational programs and practices. Our offerings guide a commitment to the practice of Grateful Living and catalyze the transformative power of personal and societal responsibility. We hold Grateful Living as an engaged mindfulness practice, grounded in both wisdom and science, which supports our ability to see the wonder and opportunity in every moment, and motivates us to act boldly with love, generosity, and respect towards one another, ourselves, and the Earth."

Our Wellness Compass Initiative fully aligns with their mission as recent research has consistently shown a high correlation between gratitude practices and well-being. 

For example, Harvard Health, the media and publishing division of Harvard Medical School, published a study regarding the importance of gratefulness. One group of people was asked to write about something every day for which they were grateful. A second group was asked to write about something every day that irritated them. They found the difference between the two groups "After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. Surprisingly, they also exercised more and had fewer visits to physicians than those who focused on sources of aggravation. You can read about the research at Health.Harvard.edu.

So as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, let's also pause to consider what it might mean to focus on grateful living, where practicing and expressing gratitude becomes not just a holiday tradition but also a regular part of our daily life.

Making It Personal:

This week is Veteran's Day. It there a veteran in your life that you can thank for their service?  Who else do you want to express gratitude to in your life right now?

In general, which comes easier for you—expressing irritation or gratitude?

Have you ever tried a gratitude practice where you write or share something you are grateful for on a daily basis? Are you willing to try that?

Are you ready to learn about other gratitude practices recommended by Grateful Living?

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they talk more about the connection between gratitude and well-being. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app, and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

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Emotional Flooding

Emotional Flooding

We are creatures of emotion more than we are creatures of logic. So said Dale Carnegie many years ago.  

Advertisers, whether of the political or the consumer kind, know this. They promote their candidate or product by appealing to our emotions, not our logic. As marriage and family therapists, we also know how easily and quickly emotions can overpower one’s ability to reason.  

John Gottman, a wise author and researcher on relationships, coined the concept of “emotional flooding” to describe the experience of what it feels like when we become hijacked by our emotions or the emotions of someone else. Our reptilian brains are primed for fight-flight mode, and when that part of our brain gets activated, rational thinking is in short supply. 

Another way to understand what emotional flooding looks like is to think of the last time you were around a young child who was over-tired or over-stimulated. In such a state, children can become flooded by emotions; at that point, it is almost impossible to appeal to their sense of logic. While we adults have greater emotional maturity, we too can become flooded with worry, fear, anger, sadness, or irritability under the right circumstances, and our logic too can disappear. 

Emotional flooding is not something we outgrow. It can still happen to any of us. We can’t choose for it not to happen. But what we can choose is how we manage it.

Recognizing our triggers and taking responsibility for ourselves when we are emotionally overwhelmed is crucial to emotional intelligence. This can look like saying, “I want to apologize for how I got hooked and completely overreacted last night and said things I regret. I want to revisit our conversation now that I’m in a more centered place to have a more productive conversation about the issue.” 

Taking responsibility is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of emotional health. So, while we never wholly outgrow emotional flooding, we can grow in our ability to manage and take responsibility for our strong emotions. 

Our Wellness Compass Model of Well-Being includes eight dimensions of wellness. One of the eight dimensions is “Handling Emotions.” We call it that because the key to well-being in this area is not our emotions in and of themselves, but how we handle them. Feelings are not good or bad, right or wrong. However, how we handle our feelings can make all the difference in our own well-being and the health of our relationships.  

Making It Personal Questions:

Do you recognize the triggers that cause you to become emotionally flooded? 

Are you aware of, take responsibility for, and even apologize when your emotions overpower your ability to reason? 

Do you have things you do that help you either be less emotionally reactive and/or help you recenter when you are overwhelmed? If not, what tools might you want to develop?

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they talk more about the concept of emotional flooding. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app, and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

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Of Halloween and Masks

Of Halloween and Masks

When our children were young, they loved putting on their Halloween masks and believing they were genuinely scaring us. After a few moments of enjoying how frightened we had become, they would pull off their masks and exclaim, "It's okay, it's just ME!" We would respond with an exaggerated sense of relief, "Oh, thank goodness, because we were SO scared.!"

We remembered this fun Halloween exchange with our children a few years later when they were in middle and high school. Now the costumes and behaviors that scared us at times were not just related to Halloween, but to the different roles that adolescents often try on as they are forming their identities. At this stage of parenting, it became even more important to remember and stay connected with the "It's okay, it's just ME" that was our children's enduring core identity, often hidden behind the many disguises of adolescence.

I also remember visiting with an elderly gentleman at this time of year in a skilled care facility and asking him if he had decided on a Halloween costume yet. He thought for a moment and then grinned and said, "I'm going to dress up as an old man this year—no one will have any idea it's me." He then pointed to himself and his clothes and added, "I guess I'm already wearing my costume!" We laughed together, and I realized that behind the exterior of his aging appearance, there too was still an "It's okay, it's just ME!" inside.

There is indeed "a just me" inside each of us. It is our true self, our core identity, that endures throughout our lifetime. Because our true self can be very vulnerable at times, we  sometimes develop different "masks"  to help us get along in the day-to-day world. There is nothing wrong with these “disguises” except when we confuse these masks—our own or others, with the true self. When any one of us are going through a challenging time this is especially important to remember.This is because, during such times, we may be more likely to hide our true selves and pretend everything is fine.

Halloween masks make for great fun—for young and old. For Halloween, the whole point is to fool others and to mask one's true identity—to be someone other than who we really are. The rest of the year, though, let's remember that hiding our true selves is a sure way to erode our own well-being, as well as the well-being of the important relationships in our lives.

Revealing our true selves will be more difficult when we feel most vulnerable. During such times, we may be tempted to put on  masks, especially the masks of anger and irritability, which like Halloween masks, are designed to scare people away. Making the sometimes difficult choice to share our true selves, to say to others, "It's okay, it's just ME!" will do wonders for both our personal and relational well-being.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they talk more about the true self and masks. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app, and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

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Lessons Learned From Walking a Corn Maze

Lessons Learned From Walking a Corn Maze

Have you ever been so stubbornly sure that you were right that you had difficulty changing your mind, even when you gained new information and it was clear that you were mistaken? Even when the rest of the people in your group gave you feedback that you were off track?

This was my (Scott’s) experience as I walked a corn maze with part of my extended family this past week. If you are not so fortunate as to live in a part of the country with corn mazes, you can learn more about them by visiting the Treinen Farm corn maze website that we walked this week in Lodi, Wisconsin (www.treinenfarm.com).

The maze was set up so that we started with just one of the eight sections of the map of the 600 x 400 yard maze. To get each additional section, we had to locate a mailbox within the maze on the map portion we had just received. I was sure I knew the way to the first mailbox and promptly got our group lost, even while insisting that I was right. Finally, there was no more denying our being off track, and I relinquished my role as navigator to those who clearly had a better sense of direction.  

Being able to recognize when we are on the wrong path is often the prerequisite to discovering the right direction forward. It sounds simple in concept, but can be difficult in practice. Whether in a corn maze, or an argument we are having with a person we love, our need to be right can sometimes hurt ourselves and others. Fortunately, I could laugh at myself and create a space for all of us to take turns figuring out what was an incredibly challenging puzzle.

That leads to the second lesson we learned. Trust the wisdom in the group and let everyone’s voice be heard. Just as there were many pieces to the overall maze map, we often each hold a piece of wisdom that, when joined with others, creates a much fuller and healthy perspective.

A third lesson we learned is the importance of pausing and listening. Before entering the corn maze, we were told that when you feel like you have lost your bearings, stop and listen to where the road noise is coming from, as that will tell you which direction is south. We benefited from that advice several times. 

Our Wellness Compass Model of Well-Being has eight wellness areas, one of which is spirituality. Spirituality helps us find or re-find our bearings when we are feeling off track. Spiritual practices like journaling, mindfulness, prayer, or time in nature help us to calm and re-center ourselves. 

The final lesson we learned, also a spiritual lesson, is to focus on enjoying the journey and not just on the destination. At this point, I can’t even remember if we actually found all the pieces of the maze that we were so set on finding when we began. But I most definitely remember how much fun we had and how much laughter we shared. We have been sharing fun memories of our time in the maze with our grandkids all week, and none of those memories have to do with what we accomplished.

Who amongst hasn’t been sure we knew where we were heading, only to find out that we were completely wrong? We all get lost from time to time and need to pause, check our bearings, and adjust our courses. Admitting when we are off track, asking for help when we need it, and keeping a sense of humor in the process, will go a long way in helping us enjoy this journey we are all on together. 

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. In this week’s episode, they talk more about other lessons they learned from walking a corn maze. You listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app, and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

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