Resolutions and Gratitude

I will usually make a New Year's resolution but I'm bad at keeping them. I don't think I've ever lost a pound based on my good intentions of January 1st.  Oh, but I continue to try and that's important.

A few years ago I made a resolution to say "Yes" instead of "No" in social situations or when asked to do something or be somewhere. My wife had passed away a couple years earlier and I was not dealing very well with things in general. I left my job and became a full-time retiree in a house by myself. I wasn't particularly reclusive but I was slowly closing down my social circle. My resolution to say "Yes" was a very important change in my life and led me to seek out more opportunities to say "yes". I made new friends and re-entered a familiar zone where I felt better and belonged to friends as much as they belonged to me. My weekly bocce club outings and my weekly hiking club started me on my way to a brighter existence but I did more than that and enjoyed it.

Last year I made a resolution to express gratitude more often and more openly. I started off and accomplished it for a while but I got caught up in my move to New Mexico and setting up my house and getting settled. I lost track of my efforts to express gratitude.  I don't think I ignored it but I didn't go out of my way or even be particularly conscious of expressing gratitude.

This year I'm going to try it again. There is a blog that I red that is written my a Doctor born in India and educated in Cuba who works with American Indians. I enjoy his insights and agree with his point of view in general.  His recent blog post was about gratitude and he advocated keeping a notebook that helped one to see and experience gratitude and enjoy it.   Here is the URL to the blog entry.

http://medicoanthropologist.blogspot.com/2013/12/gratitude-lise-how-it-may-help-you.html

Among other things...
"Writing down three acts of kindness that made the writer felt grateful for, was as effective at increasing well being, equal to spending one hour with a therapist! Wow! The power of our connection to the mind!!"

"We teach our children to be grateful, not for the sake of being polite, but also for them to understand gratefulness. Studies have shown that children who understand gratefulness tend to be better at academic performance! Seeing the recent results from an International study of performance of children from various countries, most of the top spots were taken by Asians, the USA was way down the ladder, and perhaps there is a connection? Perhaps not understanding gratefulness be one of the reasons?"

In our culture "Gratitude" is a noun, not a verb. I will see if I can make it more of a verb. I don't know if I will keep a notebook or a list but I'm going to try to express gratitude more freely.