Power of Gratitude

Wilma Mankiller, former chief of the Cherokee Nation, wore a choker around her neck with the face of two wolves. The press once asked her what they stood for. "This one," she said, pointing to one face, "represents the voice of my self-sufficiency and self-esteem, what we call “the good, true and beautiful”. And this one represents the voice of self-diminishment and criticality, or what my people call “the monsters and demons”. They are always in battle and always in struggle with each other. My choker is a reminder that every day in my life this struggle goes on."

"Which one is winning?" a reporter asked.

Her response was quite profound: "The one I feed the most."

We choose our inner world based on the attention we give it. It seems so many people these days are chasing “happiness” and yet so few of us are actually there. In fact, a landmark study called “The World Values Survey”, looked at the fascinating and fundamental question, “Are you happy?” This study was a massive multi-year undertaking involving 65 societies in six continents representing 80 percent of the world’s population. Nigeria, one of the poorest countries on the planet was first. The others after that were Mexico, Venezuela and El Salvador. Not a G-8 in the bunch. The richest country in the world, the United States, ranked sixteenth!

I believe the best way to start to promote greater inner happiness is through gratitude. The word comes from the Latin root gratia, meaning “to lend grace” or “to be in God’s favor” and Mankiller reminds us that we can choose gratitude, in every day, moment and breath.

The problem is we are so used to feeding the negative wolf our knee-jerk response to any stressful situation is to focus on what is not working. As a consequence our heard turns to the shadow and away from the light, and we migrate away from the potential for joy and into pain.

But we can change our inner happiness if we follow a few gratitude steps.

First, begin by tracking the habits that diminish your gratefulness--your negativity and addiction to what is not working. To get a sense of this, try raising your hand for one day, every time you have a negative judgment or feeling about someone or something. Do this without fail (even for instance if reading this). Do you think you’ll be raising your hands once a day? Twice a day? Some of you will look like those little wooden ducks at the lake when a Noreaster’ comes rolling in you will be flapping so fast.

Second, start to raise your level of gratitude through awareness. Keep a simple journal every day that you write in about what you are grateful for. Research shows that this is one of the very best ways. Study after study shows journal writers are healthier, happier and more self-aware. The act of awareness shapes and informs us in ways that help define the paths of our lives. Or try what anthropologist Angeles Arrien calls “The Blessing Way”. Every day take a few minutes in silence and gratitude, and then set an intention that will take you forward through positive action.

Finally, share your internal awareness with the outer world. Said another way, don’t make your gratitude a secret. I love what Steven Levine, says; “If you were going to die soon, and you only had one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”

This is not just New Age gibberish. It is in our self-interest to deepen our gratitude. Recent studies have shown that people who describe themselves as feeling grateful to others and something larger (you define) tend to have better health, more optimism, exercise more regularly, suffer less stress, and experience less clinical depression than the population as a whole—even when you factor in age and income. Grateful people tend to be less materialistic and suffer less anxiety about status or the accumulation of possessions. Thus, they are more likely to describe themselves as happy or satisfied, as reflected in the World Values Study.

Here’s the good part. You can start now in this exact moment—picking up your phone or going home and saying what needs to be said, to whom you need to say it. Why are you waiting?

Remember, as the great theologian Meister Eckhart compelled, “If the only prayer you ever said, was ‘Thank you”, that would be enough.”

Walking to the Middle

Every New Year’s Eve and day for the last seven years I have helped re-create an almost exact reproduction of the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth on the floor of our New Hampshire town hall. The original in France, was built in a thirteenth century church and is made of different types of embedded and chiseled granite. Ours sits on a creaky wood floor in a 100 year old New England hall with a fifty foot white ceiling and is created from black floor tape (a temporary affair). Still, it is stunning—both in how it looks and the impact it has garnered over the years. Started initially as an idea to celebrate the Millennium, this 42-foot wide circle contains a path over 1/3 of a mile long has become a local tradition.

A labyrinth is different than a maze. The purpose of a maze is to confuse and obfuscate, with numerous dead ends, twists and turns. But a labyrinth has only one path in and out. Its purpose, through the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other, is to clarify and enlighten. It is a guided meditative walk, taking the visitor first to its center and then back out again. I suppose it is a universal metaphor for our life’s journey and can provide the walker with an opportunity for reflection and thought.

Anyone can walk for any reason. To walk a labyrinth does not demand a great amount of preparation or concentration to benefit from the experience. Just walking an intricate path can help focus the mind. To the visitor this means a quieting of our almost constant inner buzzing. This does not just happen. But walking a labyrinth can help to distinguish between what’s really important and what’s not. This is often easier to do when the whole body is moving.

The poet Rumi put it well when he wrote:

The mystery cannot by answered
by repeating the question,
nor can it be bought by going to amazing places.
Only until I have silenced the eyes
and stilled the heart.
Only then can I
begin to cross over from confusion.

Over the years I have seen amazing things within the taped floor of our hall. In a small town the confluence of people that attend can be quite “familiar”. One year, within the labyrinth at the same time, was my wife, my two step-kids, her ex-husband, his two other kids, his business partner, his business partner’s ex-wife and daughter and everyone’s therapist! And no one seemed to mind one bit. It was like watching one of those mechanical solar system devices, where each “planet” revolves at a different speed, yet all of them are still connected in some way. Each was attending for their own reasons, and each experience was different. But together, they represented the unseen linkage that is felt within a small community.

Sometimes the impact is stunning but difficult to fathom. For instance, almost every year a photographer comes to shoot the labyrinth. While we post signs requesting sensitivity to the “sacredness” of the event this does not dissuade her from shooting endless flash photos (until stopped) or wearing shoes to walk while everyone else has removed theirs as requested. You would look at this woman and assume she was insensitive, clueless or lost. Yet when she gets to the middle of the labyrinth, a place for many of contemplation and thought, she stands there for 30 minutes with tears streaming down her face, her eyes raised in splendor and profound emotion. Go figure. She blows my mind every time.

I think the great learning I take from the labyrinth is the annual reminder that each of us walks the same path in a different way. There’s the senior adult who dances the labyrinth or the young mother who walks with her one-year old baby, the infant continually waving. Or the bent and wrinkled woman with a walker, moving at an incredibly slow pace. There are those who race along, and those who move as slowly as a three-legged turtle. Some smile to each they pass, and some are inwardly focused, eyes down and reflective.

The labyrinth is the perfect metaphor for the notion that no matter how we get to the center, it will be the same for us all. The only choice we have in the journey is the thoughts we carry, the energy we bring, the focus of our attention and the balance we maintain between our outer speed and inner our reflection. After that, it’s all just some tape on a dusty floor.