What drives you on is looking at the world these kids will have to live in
unless we sort this nonsense out that's going on.
So that's a great driving force for me but of course not only for my own
children and grandchildren but for everyone else's because we're all in this together.
So I'm going to start this week with a story that was on Davidite.com
which was headed How Gratitude Can Rewire Your Brain For Happiness And Success.
This is a story about research that says that they found evidence, considerable evidence, that when people look at The blessings they have, if you like, the good things about their life.
It is a great way to reduce mental stress, depression, and such like.
It's very true.
The whole theme of it is very true.
People tend to Focus on the negative and what they've not got and what's not happening rather than what is.
For instance, people say to me quite often, I don't know how you do what you do with all the abuse you get and all the attacks and all the efforts to shut you down.
But that's not the way I live it.
That's not the way I live my life because I'm not...
I'm not living under bombs in Yemen.
You know, I've got a roof over my head and I don't go hungry.
I have a lovely family.
So if I concentrated, for instance, on the negative, I'd become like a Like a martyr or a victim.
Oh, look what they're saying about me.
Oh, my life's so tough.
But I don't think like that.
I don't think that's tough at all.
It's just a matter of how you receive it and how you respond to it.
And after the new book comes out, which is going to be ready for pre-order about now, The Trigger, Well, the abuse from the system is going to probably reach stratospheric levels.
But so what?
I'm not living under bombs in Yemen.
I'm not going hungry.
I'm not sleeping in the street.
You know, I live a very, very interesting life.
Challenging in some ways, yes, but the challenge or the scale of the challenge only depends on how I respond to the challenge, whether it's, you know, whether it's a challenge that you just overcome or one that kind of destroys you.
That's in the power of the receiver, not the giver, the receiver.
And so...
It's like everything. It's not what's happening.
It's our response to what's happening that dictates how much what's happening affects us.
So this is a story.
It's written by a writer called Brittany Hunter, who writes this.
And the first line is quite staggering, really.
More than 40 million Americans are struggling with mental health concerns, according to Mental Health America.
The MHA. And since it released its first State of Mental Health in America report in 2015, there's been an alarming increase in adult suicidal efforts and major depressive episodes in young people.
I talked about this recently in a public videocast, demonstrating how serious the problem has become.
As someone, the writer says, who suffers from depression, I can tell you firsthand how debilitating mental health issues can be.
And it can feel as if there are no remedies available to really address the problem.
If you see a doctor, you'll be likely prescribed medication.
And... I know someone who was prescribed medication recently for pain from an injury, and their mind went all over the place.
So if you're going to get that response from painkillers, what the heck are you going to get from drugs that are specifically directed to manipulate the chemistry of the brain?
While some find this approach helpful, the writer says, others like myself have fallen victim to some of the horrendous side effects of antidepressants, which include severe weight gain and increase in suicidal thoughts and even death.
But what if instead of taking a pill that comes with a list of risk factors, something as simple as gratitude could be the answer?
This might sound overly simplistic, but as it turns out, there is actually science to back up this claim.
A few years ago, Dr.
Joshua Brown, professor of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University, and his colleague, Dr.
Joel Wong, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Indiana University, Over the course of their research, the pair came to the conclusion that the answer to this question could be found in supplementing traditional therapy sessions with gratitude sessions, which is basically looking at your life and seeing the positive rather than the negative.
Over the last decade, several studies have found that those who routinely count their blessings are overall happier and experience less depression.
However much of this research focused on those who did not suffer from mental health concerns.
Brown and Wong set out to see if gratitude could make a noticeable difference for those struggling with mental health issues.
So along with others they conducted a study comprised of nearly 300 college students who would each sought mental health counseling on campus.
Now I mean, that figure, 40 million Americans suffer from mental health issues, and there's probably an underestimate because a lot of people will suffer from that but won't report it.
And they just, you know, stiff off her lip and just carry on.
But, you know, the number of young people now who are struggling with what's called mental health, in other words, they're depressed and anxious, etc., Even suicidal is ridiculous and there has to be a reason for that and the fact that it's come in the smartphone social media era is absolutely not an accident nor in the era of constantly generated electromagnetic fields from the technological grid that's being created all around us and you see an increase again with the circulation of 5G. So the participants were recruited right before they began counselling and each suffered from some degree of anxiety and depression.
The student participants were separated into three groups.
In addition to therapy, the first group was asked to write a letter of gratitude to another person each week for three weeks.
The second group was asked to dig deep and write about their negative life experiences and the third group was not asked to do any sort of writing activity and the results were fascinating.
So the researchers Brown and Wong write the following.
What did we find?
Compared with the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling,
those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health,
four weeks and 12 weeks after their writing exercise ended.
This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial, not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals,
but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns.
In fact, it seems practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when the gratitude practice is brief.
Digging even deeper into their findings and looking specifically at how gratitude impacts the mind and body, Brown and Wong made four groundbreaking discoveries.
One, gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions.
Two, gratitude helps even if you don't share it.
Well, that's obvious because it's an internal dynamic that's going on.
Three, gratitude's benefits take time, and four, gratitude has lasting effects on the brain.
The writer says, From personal experience, I can attest to the findings discovered in Brown and Warren's research.
Like so many others, I periodically find myself trapped in a thick darkness from which it feels as though there's no escape.
Over the course of my three decades, give or take a few years, on this earth, I have tried every remedy known to man, from medication to psychotherapy and everything in between.
While some resources have helped more than others, nothing has had a profound impact on my mental state and my life quite like gratitude journaling as.
The winter of 2018 was particularly rough for me.
Already in the midst of a depressive episode, my mental state was worsened when my boyfriend broke up with me a week before the holidays, just days after my doctors had discovered a large tumor in my left breast.
To make matters worse, my career was struggling, my finances were a mess and I was missing my family who lived 2000 miles away.
Generally speaking, my life was not going the way I'd hoped.
God, it sounds like it.
And I was slowly drowning in my own self-pity.
Why do bad things keep happening to me?
I thought to myself. For once, can't something just go right?
Depression or not, we have all arrived at this place before and we have experienced these types of negative thoughts and emotions.
Truthfully speaking, in a world full of suffering and obstacles, it's quite a feat to not feel this way a majority of the time.
I would say we're meant to feel that way.
That's why the system, structured as it is, keeps us in a low vibrational emotional state.
My mind seemed eager to remind me of all these things that I'd been doing wrong in my life and everything I didn't have.
Yet, I finally found solace when I started making a concerted effort to pay attention
to all the blessings I'd been given.
Just when things were at their darkest, a friend suggested that I begin a gratitude
journal.
I wasn't initially sold on the idea that something so simple could reverse my mood
and penetrate my darkness, but I figured I didn't have much to lose and decided to
give it a try.
Even on mornings when it was hard just to get out of bed, I forced myself to get up
and make a list of everything for which I was grateful.
Oddly enough, while my life had felt devoid of meaning and goodness for the previous several months, each morning that I sat down with my journal, I never found myself at a loss for what to write.
The words effortlessly flowed from my pen as I jotted down at least 10 people or things for which I was thankful each day.
In the depth of my sorrow, I had been so focused on what I didn't have, I had completely forgotten to be thankful for everything I did have.
This is the point. This is the point.
People are focusing and they're manipulated to focus.
On the things that they don't have.
Thus they feel depressed because they don't have them and they forget about the things that they do have.
And often the things that they do have are the real meaning things of life.
You know, it's not about how many things you've got, how much money you've got.
Which is what depresses so many people.
I don't have. I wanna, wanna, wanna.
A bigger car, a bigger house will make me happy.
It won't because you're taking your unhappiness into the new car and into the new house.
Whereas interpersonal relationships, et cetera, and meaningful people around you and caring people around you, These are all phenomenal blessings which we forget while focusing on the I can't or I don't have.
How many young kids get depressed and have a feeling of deprivation because they don't have a pair of trainers with a Nike tick on them?
My friend's got Nike trainers.
I've just got trainers from the shop that's not got any tick on them.
And if you bring people up and people grow up with those symbols of success, those symbols of, if you like, happiness, things, then everything comes down to money because I don't have the money to have the things that will make me happy.
Instead of looking at all the good things that don't involve money all around you.
How many depressed people have loving people around them trying to help them?
That's far more meaningful than, I don't have the latest trainers, I don't have the latest iPhone.
Anyway, she goes on.
How fortunate I was to have a roof over my head.
Oh, it's interesting. I don't want to mention that one.
Food in my kitchen. And most importantly, a group of friends who refused to give up on me even when my depression made lovingly a trying task.
After a few weeks had passed and my gratitude journal was filled with pages of tangible blessings, most comprised of the amazing people who were part of my life.
Well, it's kind of interesting after what I've just said.
I hadn't actually read anything.
That paragraph before.
and so she's coming from the same direction.
Mostly comprised of amazing people who were part of my life, my mood slowly began to change.
As it turns out, showing gratitude can serve as a light that can help us back to where we need to be when we get lost in the darkness.
As Albert Schweitzer said, At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.
To say gratitude journaling fixed everything, the writer says, and cured my depression would be a lie, but it played an integral role in getting me back out of a...
And so this is kind of what she suggests for anyone in a low emotional state.
Most humans live busy lives.
With everything that is going on, many probably wonder how they could possibly manage to spare the time to sit down and list all their blessings in a daily journal.
The truth is, for the sake of our mental health and well-being, most of us can't afford to skip this vital practice.
And that's the other point, you see.
The way that life has evolved, or we've allowed ourselves to evolve into it, everything's got to be fast, fast, fast.
Oh, gotta, gotta, gotta. Oh, got no time, got no time.
Oh, gotta, gotta, gotta. And so you're so focused on often stuff that doesn't matter.
Gotta, gotta, gotta. You forget the good things.
And that can help pull you into these vortexes of depression.
Of course, there don't seem to be anything good about your life because you're constantly, instead of living the moment, you're constantly seeking the next moment and the next moment.
So she says, showing gratitude does not have to be a complex or time-consuming exercise.
In fact, for those interested in starting a journal but wary of the time it may take, the five-minute journal offers a great way to get started and, as the title says, will not take up a lot of your time.
Each page of the five-minute journal features an inspirational quote and is separated into a day and night portion.
For the day section, you write three things you are thankful for.
Along with three things that would make your day great, along with a daily affirmation.
At night, you write about three great things that happened to you during the day and fill out a sentence or two about the day, how the day could have gone better.
While not a strict gratitude-only journal, it sets out the foundation for gratitude journaling for those who, like I was in the beginning, she writes, are not yet completely sold on this tactic.
And if you are mindful and consistent, in a matter of a few weeks you will begin to notice a change in your mindset, however small it may be at first.
Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation of all abundance.
Which is a quote from Eckhart Tolle.
So, again, if we look at the good things in our lives instead of focusing constantly on the negative, then you can get through things.
That focusing on only the negative doesn't mean the negative doesn't have to be looked at and then addressed, but to constantly focus on that alone can pull you into these states.
My two boys and their friends were in a A house they rented in Portugal recently where they went out one night all the lads, about 11 of them and some people came in and stole lots of stuff from the house laptops, loads of things and of course that takes you into depression not least because how can anyone be psychopathic enough to do that but it can take you into depression But if you stop and you say,
hold on a minute, I'm going home in a minute.
I'm going home like tomorrow or the next day.
And, you know, what's been stolen is replaceable.
No one got hurt.
And in terms of Gareth, he was going home to a lovely, beautiful wife and a fantastic daughter.
And Jamie was going home to a soon-to-be lovely wife.
So if you look at that, it puts the robbery, the theft, into another perspective.
If you only focus on the robbery and the theft, Then you can get pulled into depression.