Posted on by intentional4christ

The Attitude of Gratitude

Gratitude, comes from the latin word gratus which means “pleasing, thankful”. It is a feeling of deep appreciation felt by the recipient of kindness, gifts, help, favors, or other types of generosity, to the giver of said gifts. 

Living a life with gratitude means choosing to focus your time and attention on the things you appreciate, are thankful for and find pleasing. It does not mean that one has to pretend that bad things or difficult things are not happening. It is not a wishy washy ‘kumbaya’ lifestyle. Remember the conversation about neuroplasticity? What you focus on your attention on will form neural pathways that strengthen your thought processes and change the way you view life. Gratitude gives us different perspectives to situations- good or bad and helps us to adjust our attitudes towards those situations. Now let us backtrack and situate this topic with our bigger conversation of changing our thought patterns and metacognition.

Do you see how focusing our attentions on things we are grateful for can help us change both our internal and external narratives? It truly takes effort to focus on the positives of a situation but the benefits are so worth it! I recently read the testimony of a husband who practiced this and ended up reaping a hundred folds of peace and joy in his marriage. He started a journal to document every single day for an entire year one thing about his wife that he appreciated with the commitment not to repeat anything. Initially it was hard but then eventually the fighting and strife got less and less. The process helped him to truly experience the tenderness of every moment with his wife as searched constantly for things to appreciate. So how do we show gratitude?

If you like to journal then a gratitude journal is certainly one way to do this. A gratitude journal is the practice of jotting down, each day, things that we are grateful for, which allow us to become more present and aware. But if you are like me and do not like to pen down your emotions but are constantly ruminating on them, then may I suggest trying Phil 4:8. When you encounter any situation good or bad, before you speak, ask yourself, “Is there anything true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy about that situation?” If so, allow your mind to dwell on that for a few minutes. This metacognitive activity will help to bring the positive things to focus and give you a reason to always be thankful. It takes work… at least initially… until it becomes a habit to be able to acknowledge the negatives but instead, dwell on the positives. You need to work on your ‘gratitude muscle’ because the attitude of gratitude does not come naturally to everyone. It needs to be an intentional and iterative process which will eventually shape our thinking. If you want to think positively, you have to actively look for positive things to think about and that is what gratitude does.

God in His infinite wisdom and design knows in this life we will face adversity, trials, and some very unbearable times along with the good; and He provides us with the tools we need to safeguard our minds and our sanity. In order to not have our thought overrun with negativity, one such tool He puts in our toolbox is gratitude and admonishes us to:

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus

1Thessalonians 5:18

So what are you grateful for today? If you cannot think of anything let this scripture set you on the path of gratitude:

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all His kind deeds-He who forgives all your iniquities and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with loving devotion and compassion, who satisfies you with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Psalm 103:2-3 BSB

Yours Truly

Posted on by intentional4christ

Thinking about thinking

In 2021, one of the things I struggled with the most and posted about the most was about my thinking patterns and the things that consumed my brainpower. All my fears and anxieties were housed in the recesses of my mind and from time to time I would take a trip down ‘what if’ lane. Every time I let my thought wander, I realized my anxiety or fears or anger in the situation in question increased exponentially.

Have you ever thought about what you are thinking about? Thinking about thinking is a process called metacognition. Metacognition is a strategy that allows us to organize and evaluate our thought processes related to learning and problem-solving. The more intentional and iterative the metacognitive process is, the better one gets at it. There are many scriptures that speak to aspects of metacognition and one such helpful and revolutionary verse is found in Philippians 4:8:

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:8 NLT

This scripture calls for us to take charge of our minds and rather than let our thoughts run off on their own, be intentional in what we think about. A rather apt illustration comes from Gary Thomas in the the Oct/Nov edition of the Focus on the Family magazine. It says if we want to be physically healthy, we won’t eat everything that looks delicious; we’ll exercise self-control. Likewise, if we want to be healthy relationally, we shouldn’t think about everything that demands our attention. We need to exert the same self-control with our minds that we do with our bodies.

We must not dwell and ruminate on things that are distasteful, dishonorable, frustrating, anger-inducing, shameful, or deserving of censure. Instead we should reject negative thoughts and lean more into the positive ones. Metacognition does not come naturally to anyone. It is an intentional process which involves making an effort to rein our thoughts in- making it a conscious part of our lives to think about what we think about and actively reject the negative thoughts.

In the past few days, I have been practicing this and this is what I have learned…a lot of my emotions both positive and negative first start with a thought-often a perception based on my assessment of the situation and then that thought becomes an emotion that leads to a reaction. Let me illustrate: An acquaintance sent me a message about a new business he had started and in my excitement I asked, “Can I share this information with others?” The response back was, “That is why I shared it with you”. Now lets consider that response: My first thought was “wow! how rude- I am trying to be helpful and I get attitude back?” In that moment, I equated that text with sarcasm and disrespect and then I got angry at the impudence. Then I remembered Philippians 4:8 and decided to put it into practice so instead of reading the text through the eyes of impertinence, I decided to imagine that there was good intention and joy behind the message and with that in mind, I interpreted the text as “Yes, that is why I shared the information with you because I knew you would be kind enough to pass it along”. Two different reactions to the same message because the starting thought processes were very different. And you know the interesting part of this, I would never truly know if the text was sent with sarcasm, excitement, or indifference and frankly that does not matter. What matters is how I reacted and in the moment, I reacted negatively to the text and developed resentment-this is why we must exercise control over what we allow ourselves to think about.

The act of thinking is not a passive process at all, we can influence our thoughts more than we realize and in my next post ,I will explore how we can do this more. In the meanwhile, stay tuned and try practicing Phil 4: 8 and take control of your thought patterns- be intentional about thinking about your thinking!

Yours Truly

https://anchor.fm/intentionally-me/episodes/Thinking-about-thinking-e1cpp2n