The amazing way gratefulness changes my brain
Note: coinciding with the release of “7 Steps Toward a More Beautiful Story of Faith”, this is the fifth of seven posts expanding on those steps. Subscribe and receive this free resource.
Step 5: Write down 3 things you are grateful for every day for 21 days. Then keep going.
It’s simply unbelievable how many burgundy Honda CR-Vs there are on the road. Or haven’t you noticed? What car do you notice everywhere you go? Is it quite possibly the same type that you drive?
What you think about grows. We’ve all had the experience of buying a certain car and then seeing them everywhere. Obviously they were there all the time but you didn’t notice them. This is the work of your amazing Reticular Activation System (RAS), and it’s a very powerful gift from God hidden inside our brains.
The RAS filters all the millions of data points that our bodies receive through our senses everyday and helps us focus on the things that are most important to us. You could be sitting in a noisy crowded room ignoring everything you hear until someone says your name or even a word that sounds like your name. All of a sudden you’re paying attention. Thanks RAS.
The amazing thing is my brain automatically thinks burgundy Honda CR-Vs are important, because I own one and I sit in it regularly. It’s interesting but not all that helpful to me. But what if I could train my brain to find things to be grateful for each day? What if I could get my RAS to bring to my attention moments of simple beauty and joy each day? What effect would noticing the beauty and the joy and the goodness in everyday events have upon my attitude and my productivity? I actually know. It moves me deeper and deeper into a more beautiful story of faith.
Today I was walking early in the morning before the sun was up. I was bundled up in a coat, hat, and gloves as I walked Miss Lucy around the neighborhood when I heard it: the low guttural croaking of a couple of frogs hiding in the bushes. It made me smile to think of these simple slimy creatures waking up and saying hello to each other. And more than that it made me say, “Thank you, God.”
Two days earlier on a solo walk on a crisp and cool sunny morning I saw mist rising off of a grassy field and the sun’s rays shining through the wispy clouds. I stopped and looked at it and felt joy in my heart and I said to myself, “Boom!” (“Boom” is my preferred shorthand for, “Wow thank you God for that little piece of amazingness!”)
Although I’ve always been optimistic at heart, I’ve not always noticed the simple beauty of the world around me. The beautiful aspects of people I interact with in simple and profound ways would often get lost in my quest for efficient productivity.
But things started changing when I made a very simple decision last year. I decided I would take a couple minutes each morning to simply write down three things I was grateful for at that moment. At first I decided I was going to do it daily for 21 days. Here’s what I discovered: I never ran out of things to be grateful for, because after just about two weeks of doing this, it was as if they started multiplying like burgundy Honda CR-Vs on the road. They were always there, but my brain was not tuned into being grateful so these moments went unnoticed in the hurry of life. But after just a couple weeks of daily writing down three things I was grateful for, my Reticular Activating System got into the game with me. Then I started having “Boom!” moments much more often, thinking, “I’m going to write about this in my thankful journal!”
Then later in the year Ann and I listened to an interview of one of our childhood musical idols, Amy Grant. (OK she was more than that. Maybe a childhood crush is more accurate.) In the interview she shared about the power of gratitude in her life, and how she was learning to “prime her brain” to notice the good and the beautiful. She mentioned a resource that her sister had passed on to her and she had found helpful. It’s a product from Intelligent Change called “The Five Minute Journal”. This simple journal features 180 days of entering answers to some very basic questions about gratefulness in the morning and the evening - 5 minutes a day. The next day Ann and I bought one for each of us, and I’ve been working through the 180 days.
This practice just keeps on changing the way I see the world. Gratitude keeps me in a positive frame of mind and keeps me connected to God all through the day in a way I’ve never experienced before. Tuning my RAS to goodness and beauty helps me see the good in people and treat them the way I want to be treated, even if they have a rough “shell” around them.
Are you ready to set your RAS up to highlight more goodness, more beauty, more joy in your everyday experiences? Maybe your more beautiful story of faith is just 3 gratefuls a day away.
Step 1 - Lean into your doubts
Step 2 - Evaluate the fruit of your spiritual practices
Step 3 - Sing less worship songs. Serve more people in need.