ATTITUDES OF GRATITUDE Archives

December 31, 2015 By Admin

Ideas about Attitudes of Gratitude – M. J. Ryan

Attitudes of Gratitude Thoughts and Applications

M. J. Ryan presents some interesting practices in the book, Attitudes of Gratitude (1999). Here are some ideas. Hope you will practice some of them soon. As The 14th Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh suggest, we should always appreciate the preciousness and miracle of human life – our own life no matter what the challenges are.

Understand that your emotional mood and the quality of your thoughts depend on where you place your attention and reflection. Do your best to pay more attention to the softness and warmth of your human heart and soul. Pay more attention to positive experiences and less attention to negative experiences.
When you are plagued with GIANT problems or BIG emotional reactions to not-so-giant problems, look into the nature of the problem itself to see if any solutions arise. Life is all about arising and falling experiences – both good and bad. Causes and conditions present and lead to pleasure, pain/suffering, or neutrality.
Pay much more attention to the little joys (“wonderment”) you may be missing by being on autopilot and rushing around trying to be happier trough material gain. Wealth and fame are nice, but they DO NOT bring lasting, inner happiness. Your happiness is an INSIDE JOB!
Do your best to be in the present moment of experiences. The past is gone; you cannot change it. The future is not here yet; you cannot control it. Your real power comes from responding to whatever is now in your present moment experience.
Pay much more attention to what is working for you now rather than what you desire and crave from the past or the future. If you are not present-minded, you cannot appreciate and have gratitude for what exists now.
Reflect upon and honor your close friends, your family, and your ancestors. Use any of their spiritual supports to do well in adversity and to do great in happy experiences.
Practice meditations on appreciation, gratitude, and loving kindness. These practices build your capacity to be happy. These practices also improve compassionate actions and self-compassion. Do you have self-compassion?
Periodically, live a whole day as if it were your last day living on earth. Notice! See what you decide to do.
In the final analysis, Buddhism informs us that life on earth will contain suffering, joy, and neutrality. All three conditions will occur in your experiences. You cannot escape suffering! How you respond will determine your level of satisfaction or your quality of life in the long run. Be happy! Be at peace! Be in the present moment!

For more information refer to Ryan, M. J. (1999). Attitudes of Gratitude: How to Give and Receive Joy Every Day of Your life. New York: MJF Books.

mindfulhappiness

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE or any image below to Order

Looking at Early Judeo-Chrsitian Meditation Practice An early description of enlightened liberation in Buddhist meditation practice reads like this: Birth is destroyed, the spiritual life has been lived, what had to be done has been done. There is no more coming back to any state of being. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, darkness […]

Stress In America – How to Deal with it Effectively The American Psychological Association just released the results of its annual stress survey for 2014. This comprehensive study of stress in America has some serious implications for our health and happiness. Although self-reported stress levels in many categories are lower than in 2013, the overall […]

Counseling/Psychotherapy with Self-Compassion Please begin by ending all conversations, and PLEASE shut-off your phones and/or laptops. Simply be for a moment in the quietude of your inner self. Please close your eyes if you wish to do so. Contemplate the sacred nature of your profession – saving lives, reducing suffering, being a constant object, practicing […]

Happiness Path – The 14th Dalai Lama His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama has suggested, among many other important things, that humans may experience true inner happiness by regular practice on the path to enlightenment. In his 2012 book, From Here to Enlightenment, he noted that personal happiness may be attained via specific behaviors and ways of […]

Many Benefits of Mindfulness and Vipassana Meditation The Dalai Lama (Gyatso, Tenzin), the world leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and Paul Ekman, the world famous Psychologist of human emotions, have teamed up to discuss how to use mindful emotional awareness skills to become more emotionally balanced and compassionate. These two highly skilled practitioners have listed 21 […]

Helper Self-Care is Important In the most current issue of The National Psychologist (July-August, 2019) an article linked helper effectiveness, risk management, and clinical outcomes to helper self-care. To make a long story shorter, I will simply paraphrase and re-word the suggestions. These recommendations support YOUR emotional survival and successful risk management as a helper as […]

Meditation Process in Chan Buddhism Chan Master Changlu’s The Deportmant for Sitting Meditation (12th century China) is a clear and helpful set of instruction. 1) It begins with the making of a personal vow for great compassion, personal liberation, and samadhi – all for the purpose of delivering sentient beings from their suffering and to their […]

How to Find & Choose an Effective Therapist Recently The Harvard Health Newsletter posted some interesting questions to ask while seeking out a psychotherapist. I will add a few more details and areas of inquiry in this post. Keep in mind that these questions and inquiries do not mean you will be happy and improve […]

Vipassana for Depression, Anxiety, Trauma, and Addictions The integration of Vipassana meditation with various forms of therapy has for many years been a standard of treatment worldwide and in Vermont, especially when impulse control and emotion regulations issues are included. Buddhist Psychology offers clear explanations why this intervention may be helpful for so many suffering […]

Holiday “Blues” and a Few Antidotes It is common for many people to experience a full range of emotions during the holiday season. It is also quite common for many people to experience holiday “blues.” In a more clinical understanding, this condition often includes both sadness/depression and anxiety/apprehension. Ideally, we should be able to experience […]

What is Mindfulness – The Nature of Mindfulness This is an expanded second post on the nature of mindfulness. This post will begin with secular understandings, and end with basic spiritual path information. Generally mindfulness is a wide-ranging process with a special noticing quality. It focuses the power of attention leading to improved concentration. Mindfulness […]

Beyond MBSR – Quick Start Skills Self-calming for counselors and other helpers is one of the most important survival practices to master. Self-calming consists a set of basic mindfulness skills, all of which must be practiced regularly to achieve desired emotion-regulation effects. The utility of these skills is well established in clinical research, and not […]

More on Yoga Nidra Yoga nidra is sometimes called yoga sleep or yoga relaxation. It is a very powerful mindfulness technique that allows one to relax the body and limbic brain area, while holding mental control for deeper relaxation and projective practices without falling asleep. For some it may be like lucid dreaming, but a […]

Teaching Mindfulness in Therapy – More for you to consider- New Harbinger Publications has just issued a blog post on problems encountered when teaching mindfulness to clients in therapy. After over 30 years of using mindfulness and meditation in psychotherapy, I have a few words of advice to add. Following these advisories may help to […]

Psychodynamics of Alliance – Therapeutic Relationship Enhancement This post includes basic considerations, processes, and clinical skills necessary for developing a strongly positive clinical alliance and therapeutic relationship in therapy. Here the alliance is required for any substantial change in psychotherapy, and the therapeutic relationship rides the quality of the initial alliance to expand and inter-penetrate […]

Meditation on Ecodharma and Buddhist Ecology Sit calmly and begin to breathe in and out deeply and slowly. Open your eyes to see and appreciate the natural environment you are in. Close your eyes now if you wish to do so. Know that this nature – the sky, clouds, stars, father sun, mother moon, […]

Mindful Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Earth Protectors The Standing Rock Sioux earth protectors are fighting earth destruction, environmental degradation, oil profiteering, and corporate greed. Yes, I suppose finding huge reserves of crude helps many people become employed in the Dakotas. This is important. But other earth-wise activity (more solar for example) would be far […]

Wind Ridge Press NEW Publication! Author Anthony Quintiliani, a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years professional clinical experience, casts a wide net into the personal, clinical, and societal causes of prolonged human suffering and unhappiness in his book Mindful Happiness. The book’s guided interventions are aimed at helping to relieve depression, anxiety, traumatic reactivity, and […]

Pursuit of The Middle Way in Buddhist Practice Some have suggested that following the Eight Fold Path implies pursuing the middle way between sensory pleasure gratification versus self-mortification. Both of these extreme experiences are unhelpful to people. Others suggest the middle way is between being inactive versus self-centered striving, desiring, and clinging. The Buddha’s advice […]

Stress in America – On the Rise – The American Psychological Association recently completed its national survey on stress in America. Stress in America for adults is on the rise! I will review below a selection of reported percentages from the 2015 survey (published in 2016). 1) Younger people are more stressed; Xers and Millennials […]