Personal Testimonies
Over the course of one semester, Team Thank You participated in daily mindfulness practices focused on gratitude and reciprocity. Find below their reflections of that experience.
Kimberly Lizotte
I’m very busy, as are most people, and prior to this experience mindfulness exercises were not a priority for me. I feel that our society stigmatizes being mindful, while emphasizing productivity, in turn diminishing emotional connection to ourselves, others, and the world around us. This makes it easy to view the world from a narrow egocentric lens.
Because gratitude practices were a novel aspect to my daily routine, I decided to try a little bit of everything. Some days I would meditate; I would sit in a quiet space, maybe put on sounds of nature, and allow myself to go to my happy place. Other days I would make a list of what I was grateful for; starting with small things like my bed and evolving to grander things like my family and friends or my education. A simple reminder to be grateful for the things I often took for granted. I also started journaling. I found it cathartic to write about how I was feeling, what I was thinking, aspects of my day that had impacted me in one way or another. It forced me to be present in the moment and to put things into perspective.The most impactful mindfulness exercise I participated in was journaling about my day, and taking the time to make the people most important to me a priority. I found that I was less inclined to jump to conclusions, overreact, or stress myself out. Overall I have found that I am more balanced, especially emotionally. Through my gratitude practices I was able to find an outlet to let go of all external tensions, and focus on myself. A weight had been lifted and I could breathe easier.
Isabel Nass
Gratitude for me has been an intentional component of my thought process for roughly two years. My partner and I regularly have verbal gratitude sessions in which we go back and forth making gratitude statements, and at the end, set an intention of some sort. I started practicing daily gratitude journaling during a Yoga and Mindfulness course I took with John McConnell in the fall of 2016. Writing lists of gratitude statements allowed me to refer back to prior lists and reflect on my practice. Consciously acknowledging things, people, and circumstances I am grateful for has helped me manage my emotions in everyday situations when things don’t go as planned.
Committing to writing out a daily list of things (or circumstances, or places, or people) I’m grateful for has been putting a sharper focus on just how transformative it can be to strive towards a perpetual state of gratitude. For me, the daily reminders make it easier for my mind to redirect my thought process in moments of stress or anger. I have compared gratitude to a highway exit, and my mind is driving a car on the highway. If I am faced with a stressful situation, it is easy to take my high-speed vehicle down a route I know without having to think about it - like a frequently traveled commute. Mindfulness for me has been slowing the car down and being conscious about what turns and exits the vehicle that is my mind is taking. I am beginning to notice that practicing mindful gratitude in all situations, especially those where it is more difficult to bring to mind the pieces of the situation that I am grateful for, is making me a less emotionally reactive individual. With gratitude and mindfulness, I theoretically have the tools to always be learning, even when my life is stressful, and that is really empowering. To put it in different terms, my inner light is starting to run on its own power source, rather than be dimmed and brightened by external circumstances. When it dims, I am able to use my own thoughts to turn the brightness back up so I can shine outward. Without gratitude as a fundamental framework of my thoughts, I’m not sure the light would be as bright.
Milo
Gratitude has always seemed to take a back-burner when it comes to me getting done what I need to get done. I saw what was ahead of me as a task that needed to happen, but struggled to see what I already had as something I should have felt gratitude for. I started this project hoping to learn how to maintain a balance between gratitude and striving for what I do not yet have.
After doing my gratitude practice, I realize that it is not just an aspect of my life that I need to pay attention to once in a while. It should be be constantly maintained as a key feature in my everyday life. At first, it was tricky to keep up with trying to name all of the aspects of my life I am thankful I do not live without. However, once it started to happen out of habit, I realized what practicing gratitude and mindfulness was doing for me. By paying attention to even the smallest positive things, I could start to build a scaffold of positive support around myself. Instead of paying attention to the bad things in life, even if I am able to take steps toward alleviating the stress they create, I can more easily recognize when good things happen. It feels as though I am constructing a buffer of warmth around myself that paints how I see the rest of my life a bit differently.
Miguel
Growing up I practiced meditating and prayer at a young age. Coming to America also gave me many opportunities so I have always been aware of my blessings since I was born into very hard world and given a great opportunity. Life as a student in college has not allowed me to practice various forms of meditation as much as I would like to.
My individual gratitude practice for this project was daily journalism focusing on expression of gratitude. I wrote in a journal of things I was grateful for in any form I wished whether it was a list, poetry, or anything else. I have appreciate having homework assignments where I can reflect on my own experiences in a positive way without any prompts or criteria beyond journaling of gratitude. This project has let me realize how mindfulness and gratitude practices can be integrated in school work. Thus making being a student less stressful allowing me to appreciate the rest of my school work more.
Juli
Since I first started reading about our connections to the landscape and ways we can foster stronger human and nature connections, I've always been interested in how art can enhance these connections and relationships. When we were first told to pick a mindfulness practice to focus on for 10 minutes a day, drawing immediately came to my mind. I wanted to see if engaging in art inspired by nature I had observed that day or recently would improve my attitudes, sense of being, and sense of place. Something I immediately ran into was struggling with "it vs. thou" when I was drawing the bird or the tree, and deciding whether I draw exactly what is in my memory or if I should look up pictures of who/what I wanted to draw. As I got further along in my practice however, I decided it didn't matter. Some days I would look up what I wanted to draw, and draw it exactly or I found another technique is to draw the same thing over a number of days and I found that with each drawing I could pull out more and more detail from my memory. I found the second way to foster a much more intimate connection with the subject of my drawing and I surprised myself with what I was able to recover from my memory through pencil and paper.
I believe art and creativity are a vital part of our connection to nature, and that it will be important to keep it incorporated into curriculum because arts are being defunded across the country and they hold so much value when it comes to developing both sides of the brain and not just the left (technical, analytical, science, math) side of the brain. I plan to continue drawing, painting, and writing and maintain this greater sense of being human, being grateful, and being present in the moment with the humans and nature around me.