Gratitude = Goodness

Want a natural high? Just tell someone thank you (sincerely). From Psychology Today:

Gratitude is a sentiment we'd all do well to cultivate, according to positive psychologists, mental health clinicians and researchers who seek to help everyone create more joy in life. Feeling thankful and expressing that thanks makes you happier and heartier—not hokier.

The biggest bonuses come from experiencing gratitude habitually, but natural ingrates needn't despair. Simple exercises can give even skeptics a short-term mood boost, and "once you get started, you find more and more things to be grateful for," says Robert Emmons, a leading gratitude researcher at the University of California at Davis.

In gratitude letters like those penned by Peterson and his students, writers detail the kindnesses of someone they've never properly thanked. Read this letter aloud to the person you're thanking, Peterson says, and you'll see measurable improvements in your mood. Studies show that for a full month after a "gratitude visit" (in which a person makes an appointment to read the letter to the recipient), happiness levels tend to go up, while boredom and other negative feelings go down. In fact, the gratitude visit is more effective than any other exercise in positive psychology.

Forgiveness is the key to happiness

When you observe others do you tend to pass judgment? Do you judge their actions as mistakes or sins?

Sin is an idea we teach ourselves, and we can also teach ourselves to forgive. It takes some practice. If we are willing, we can learn to take the key to happiness, and use it on our own behalf. Let's try to devote ten minutes today, to learning how to forgive and receive forgiveness, too.

Some may not believe that giving and receiving are the same. Yet we will try to learn today that they are one through practicing forgiveness toward one whom we think of as an enemy, and one whom we consider a friend. And as we learn to see them both as one, the lesson will be extended to ourselves, and we will see that their release included our own.

Begin by thinking of someone you do not like, who seems to irritate you, or to cause regret in you; one you actively despise, or merely try to ignore. It does not matter what form your anger takes. You probably have chosen the person already.

Now close your eyes and see this person in your mind, and look at them a while. Try to perceive some light in them somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture that you hold of them. Look at this picture till you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers them, and makes the picture beautiful and good. Look at this changed perception for a while.

Now, turn your mind to someone you call a friend. Try to transfer the light you learned to see around your former "enemy" to your friend. Perceive them now as more than friend to you, for in that light their holiness shows you your savior, saved and saving, healed and whole. Then let your friend offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now you have been forgiven by yourself.

Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal,
fallible and full of sin,
and know I am the perfect Son of God.

From A Course in Miracles, Lesson 121

Love is...

Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a stage of vulnerability.
- J Krishnamurti

Hansei Shinasai

Reprinted from the blog tongodeon:

I was helping a Japanese friend move a while ago and I noticed a book in her collection: "How To Deal With Americans Who Don't Hansei". The cover art was striking and I became interested.

"What's hansei?"
"There really isn't a word for it in English."
"So what does it mean?"
"Hmmm, it is hard to explain."

"Hansei" literally means "reflection". Figuratively it describes being conscious of your behavior and its impact on others. People who take pride in driving noisy cars do not hansei. People having loud conversations while walking past your bedroom window at 2AM do not hansei. People who stall checkout lines at the grocery store while they figure out whether or not they've got the money to buy what they selected do not hansei. Hansei is the reason why mobile phones are always on vibrate and only used for sms in public areas: text creates less disturbance than loud conversations. Hansei is at the center of Japan's iconic anti-smoking ads, reminding smokers not of their own health risks but of the disturbance they are causing to others. Hansei also means greeting success with modesty and humility. To stop hansei means to stop learning. With hansei one never becomes so convinced of one's own superiority that there is no more room or need for further improvement.


George Bush is the international no-hansei icon; he does not self-reflect, and because of this he makes the same mistakes over and over. The Iraq War is a no-hansei disaster with no regard for world opinion and no plan for victory beyond the presumption that our supremacy makes success inevitable and guaranteed. Without familiarity with such a basic concept we are a nation whose parents did not raise us right.

From the blog Gemba Panta Rei:

"Han" means to change, turn over, turn upside down. "Sei" is the simplified form of a character meaning to look back upon, review, examine oneself. As a native speaker of Japanese "hansei" strikes me as both an intellectual and emotional exercise. With hansei there is a sense of shame, if that is not too hard of a word. This may come from having been asked to do a lot of hansei as a child, being told "hanse shinasai!" which in English might be "Learn to behave!"

The point is, when you do hansei it is almost never because you are "considering past experience" as if they were happy memories. You are confronting brutal facts about your actions and the impact they had, in hopes that you can learn from this and change your behavior in the future.

Hugs just may be the answer

Check out the Free Hugs Campaign

Everything happens according to plan

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present, and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?
- from A Course in Miracles

Men I love, part 1

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-- Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech

Find them. Love them.

Mother Theresa is my hero. Though she helped the desperately poor in Calcutta, she always reminded people that they could do the same in their own hometown. People need love everywhere and we can provide that love today--at work, in our neighborhoods, and in our own homes.

Some favorite Mother Theresa quotes:

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty."

"Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go."

"There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives--the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them."

The true genius of America

I have a faith in simple dreams, and an insistence on small miracles...

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.

Lookin' toward the future:

"America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November [2008], and [Barack Obama] will be sworn in as President, and [Whoever he Chooses] will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come."

-- Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic National Convention

Try something new today

Haiku is a very short poetic form of traditional Japanese poetry. The haiku poet writes about a moment in time, a brief experience that stands out. The traditional haiku poet usually focused on nature, although modern poets have the urban setting as their venue.

Traditional Japanese haiku consisted of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 units each, which are generally applied as syllables, and contained a special word — the kigo — that indicated the season in which the haiku was set. Some consider that a haiku must also combine two different images, be written in present tense, have a focus on description and have a pause (the kireji or "cutting word") at the end of either the first or second line. Today's English-language poets produce haiku in one of three ways:

(1) by using three (or fewer) lines of no more than 17 syllables in total;

(2) by using the concept of metrical feet rather than syllables. A haiku then becomes three lines of 2, 3, and 2 metrical feet, with a break or pause after the second or fifth;

(3) by using the "one deep breath" rule: take a deep breath and you should be able to read the haiku aloud without taking a second breath.

Often the subtle linkage between the two sets of images within a haiku will contain an interesting insight or spiritual message.

An example of classic haiku (by Basho):

An old pond!
A frog jumps in -
the sound of water

Another Basho classic reads:

The first cold showers pour
Even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw

Here's my attempt on a late Tuesday evening (while listening to iTunes):

Randy Travis -
Wallow in lonesome longing
A good Fall sound

And a second one, a bit longer (5-7-5)

I like working here
Good business mixed with laughter
Time passes quickly

Try it!

A new look at your old hometown

I'm from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a port city on Lake Michigan that retains some renown for building submarines during WWII. It was not a bad place to grow up, but the blue collar factories and farming certainly didn't hold any career excitement for me. So I joined the Air Force to get out and pretty much never looked back.

I recently came across some photos of my hometown on flicker that made me rethink my entire upbringing. Obviously the city has had some visionary leaders through the years; they have repositioned it as a tourist destination and all I can say is, wow.

Was the area always this lovely?