Appreciation
Look around.
There are some days that I just don’t appreciate. The gray days, the drizzly ones, the days when I feel tired and just want to go back to bed. I guess I also don’t appreciate the days when nothing seems to work out right, when the grocery bag breaks and the yogurt splatters on the ground and the dashboard light begins to tell me something is wrong with my car. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.
There are other days when everything seems to be going okay for me, but I hear about something awful happening in another part of the world. A bridge collapses, or a tornado hits. Even worse are those times when I find out that our country has decided that what we want is more important than the life of a child who is in the way when we drop a bomb. Those actions that I don’t understand kick all the appreciation right out of me.
Then there are the normal days. The days when I go to work, or sit down to write, and things generally go according to plan. If I don’t pay attention, I won’t do much appreciating on those days either. I’ll be paying attention to whatever I’m doing, or wherever I’m driving, and those things will take up all my bandwidth.
I am mistaken on those days. I’ve missed it.
There was an opportunity on even the worst of these days to notice something good. And I missed it by not paying attention. Appreciation is related to mindfulness and noticing what is going on in the moment. We can still be grateful later on, looking back, but in that moment something happened that I could have enjoyed and appreciated, and I didn’t. I should know better.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5)
When Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonika, he had been beaten, imprisoned, threatened, and had every reason to be discouraged. But he wasn’t. In fact, the opposite — he was giving thanks. My belief is that his gratitude was due to his faith. Even people who don’t believe the same way that Paul did can benefit from gratitude, however.
There are a variety of studies that show that gratitude improves subjective well-being. It’s not that hard to improve your sense of appreciation. Chade-Meng Tan is an engineer who worked for Google. He talks about finding “thin slices of joy” every day. These can be anything from noticing the comfort of sitting in a chair to enjoying a sip of water when you are thirsty. These experiences may only last a few seconds, but over time and with practice, you begin to notice that they occur very frequently. This is a way to experience more gratitude in your life.
There are plenty of other ways that you can add to the times you are appreciative in your life.
Journal about things that you are grateful for.
Think about someone you are grateful for.
Write down 3 things you are grateful for before bed each night.
Write some thank you notes.
All of these exercises put you in a state of gratitude.
During this season, I’m reminded more frequently to be grateful. The buds and the blooms help me to see a little differently. Take a walk, and pick a few things to be grateful for along the way.
