the transfer begins

I recently started being a regular blogging as I embarked on an eating adventure with the onset of Lent. I blogged at sparkpeople.com but have decided that it's missing some features I'd like to have in my blog. Let's see how this site measures up. It seems to be what people are using these days so why not me too? Below is the first blog that really marked my recent series, well really, it's more like a movie ad before your movie starts playing.

think positive, feel better?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I've been searching for a more noticeably spiritual connection to my Lent activities this year. Here's one discovered today on care2.

Positivity Quest Week 5: Intentional Gratitude
posted by Wendy Strgar Feb 14, 2010 5:04 pm
filed under: Health & Wellness, General Health, Guidance, Healthy Mind, Inspiration, Love & Relationships, Peace
Positivity Quest Week 5: Intentional Gratitude


“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.” Johannes A. Gaertner

Another way to practice mindfulness is through intentional gratitude. In the same way that paying mindful attention expands our perceptions and broadens our minds, the work of noticing and recording moments of deep gratitude broadens and expands our hearts. By naming the gifts of our lives, we encourage our awareness of goodness to spread out and occupy a greater part of who we are. Through expanding our capacity for gratitude, we make more room for whatever else we choose to focus on. Expanding awareness prepares you for greater potential.

I am finally feeling ready for the next big step in my positivity quest, the gratitude diary. It feels like a big leap from the wrist band method which I have been practicing since day 8. This new step takes the big leap from watching for negative remarks to generating and recording a world of recognized gifts. I have been noticing the gifts more and more as I have loosened the stranglehold of my negative thinking, but committing myself to daily records of the goodness that makes up my life will have dramatic results I think.

A study from the UC Davis psychology labs, researchers are engaged in a long term project to lift gratitude from the forgotten factor to one of the foundations of positivity research and its consequences on health and well being. Religious practices and eastern philosophies have long embraced gratitude as an essential aspect of love and goodness. It has also been associated with well being, health and life integrity. The long term research looks at methods to cultivate gratitude in daily life and assess its effects on well being and also to reliably measure individual differences in individual experience of gratefulness.

As expected, keeping gratitude journals were associated with better health and greater optimism. Also people who recorded their gratitude made more progress towards reaching their goals. This might be because, people who expanded their minds with recording their grateful moments were more alert, enthusiastic and attentive. Practicing gratitude raises your energy level on all levels. We will keep looking at the benefits as the experiment goes….

So I bought this little, purse size journal the other day, thinking I was ready to make this next leap, but until today, just kind of looked at it, turned it over in my hands, but couldn’t quite get it open. Somehow, it felt intimidating to commit myself to focusing on the grateful moments. But then, one brief conversation made me realize I was ready. It was at my office, where we all teach each other what it means to work in a love business. “Are you ready to raise your vibration? Because its all just about where you are vibrating.” That was the second entry, after the one about my 13 year old son who told me on the way to school while trying to get me to listen to his rap music, “you know mom, the positivity quest is all about having an open mind.”

The question remains: “Do you fill up your gratitude diary, or does it fill you up?”
Wendy Strgar is a loveologist who writes and lectures on Making Love Sustainable, a green philosophy of relationships which teaches the importance of valuing the renewable resources of love and family. Wendy helps couples tackle the questions and concerns of intimacy and relationships, providing honest answers and innovative advice. Wendy lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband, a psychiatrist, and their four children ages 11-20.