After that shooting at the Butler, PA Republican rally, the media has pumped up-to-the-minute, detailed accounts of what, who, when, and where. As always, such public acts of violence generate strong, albeit mixed emotions. Hope and unity expressed by reporters, pundits, and the man on the street are juxtaposed with sadness and despair by others in the same crowd.
Then came our president’s resignation. More chaos.
Wrestling with the “What the …?” of all this, I wondered how I could salve the emotional pain and confusion. The answer came in the notes from a recent client interview. It was a message of gratitude, expressed by a man who had every reason to be bitter about life.
Meet Joe Baggarley
Joe is 91 years old and he’s been through a lot. His “a lot” began in 1934 when he was eighteen months old. Here’s how he tells it.
“It was late one afternoon when my father came home drunk. After arguing with my mother, he grabbed his shotgun and pulled the trigger. They found me lying on the floor next to my dead mother. The police surmised that she was holding me on her right side, so when he shot her on the left side her body protected me. With our dad in jail, my grandparents said they couldn’t take care of me and my two older brothers, so they put us in the Florida Methodist Orphanage.”
When he was eleven, Joe’s grandparents put them to work on their dairy farm. At the time, America’s Fair Labor Standards Act lacked teeth, so he worked for another seven years without pay. He still couldn’t read or write when he joined the Army at age eighteen. His Army-issue boots were the first shoes he ever owned.
Now there’s someone who had a right to be hopeless. But wait.
Joe went on to become a loving husband and father of three and a successful furniture store owner. Best of all, he’s a very happy man of faith who lives by the credo, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
I know this because I’m writing his biography.
In Praise of Gratitude
I was infected by Joe’s unbridled joy. He showed me that gratitude trumps despair amid chaos. Because where hope abounds, pessimism has no place to dwell. So, how can hope dwell in your consciousness? Here’s how.
Make a Gratitude Journal.
This may sound like pop psychology, but it is steeped in scientific proof. A 2016 study about the power of positive thinking conducted by King's College London, Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience, proved that people with stress or worry changed their life perspective after one month of “alternative thinking.”
The study found that whenever you think positive thoughts, the creation of new synapses (areas connecting neurons) increases. Keeping your brain focused on positives yields a boost in mental productivity, focus, creativity, and problem-solving. Science has proven that a reworking of our inner dialogue can be changed from negative to grateful over time and practice. Because you can’t feel unhappy and be grateful at the same time.
On the other hand, negative thoughts impede cognition, and who wants that?
Your Homework
Try this: Write one thing for which you’re grateful for every year of your life. It can be big things or small things—from being grateful for the knuckle on your finger that holds your cup of coffee, to your son or daughter’s stellar basketball game. Print it out and save it on the cloud. I did, and I’m up to fifty and counting.
Sure it’s cliché, but many clichés are such because they’re true.
As Melody Beattie put it, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, and confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
The next time you feel like implanting your foot in the monitor, read your list. Read it aloud. Read it often.
Ken
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Ken
