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bernie

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Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 9:43 AM ( #1 )
Power of Gratitude...
(Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.--Cicero)



The Power of Gratitude (An expert explains why being grateful is good for your health!)

I'm a researcher (Stephen Post, Ph.D., Cleveland, Ohio, November, 2007). As a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine, I deal in facts. I'm also a father and a husband—a man blessed with a rich family life. Like many researchers, I've always felt that my clinical and my personal life were two different things. Two different worlds, really

Then, in 2001, I created a research group called the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL), dedicated to testing and measuring the effects of love and other positive caring emotions in human life. Our findings surprised me, as I think they will you. Our studies have shown that love-related qualities—like gratitude—actually make us physically healthier.

The implications of this research have changed the way I look at my life all year 'round, but they're especially meaningful to me during this time of year. Here are five discoveries from our work at IRUL to keep in mind as you gather together to give thanks with your loved ones. Gratitude:

1. Defends
just 15 minutes a day focusing on the things you're grateful for will significantly increase your body's natural antibodies.

2. Sharpens
Naturally grateful people are more focused mentally and measurably less vulnerable to clinical depression.

3. Calms
A grateful state of mind induces a physiological state called resonance that's associated with healthier blood pressure and heart rate.

4. Strengthens
Caring for others is draining. But grateful caregivers are healthier and more capable than less grateful ones.

5. Heals
Recipients of donated organs who have the most grateful attitudes heal faster.





"Thank God--every morning when you get up--that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you a hundred virtues which the idle never know."
~ Charles Kingsley ~


"No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks."
~ Unknown ~


"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
~ Marcel Proust ~


"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity.
These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable."
~ Joseph Addison ~


"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
~ Melody Beattie ~


"Blessed are those that can give without remembering and receive without forgetting."
~ Author Unknown ~


"If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul."
~ Rabbi Harold Kushner ~


"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."
~ Epictetus ~


"The sun was shining in my eyes, and I could barely see
To do the necessary task that was allotted me.
Resentment of the vivid glow, I started to complain--
When all at once upon the air I heard the blindman's cane."
~ Earl Musselman ~


"There is a calmness to a life lived in Gratitude, a quiet joy."
~ Ralph H. Blum ~ ( American Author )


"You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you."
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach ~
Simple Abundance



"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy ~


"A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world."
~ Joseph Addison ~


"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 ~


"To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude."
~ Albert Schweitzer ~


"Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement - and we will make the goal."
~ Jerome P. Fleishman ~


"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
~ Cicero ~


"Every time we remember to say "thank you", we experience nothing less than heaven on earth."
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach ~


"Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life."
~ A. J. Cronin ~


"Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart."
~ Seneca ~


"True thanksgiving means that we need to thank God for what He has done for us, and not to tell Him what we have done for Him."
~ George R. Hendrick ~


"Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul."
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~


"Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude.
Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness.
Thankfulness may consist merely of words.
Gratitude is shown in acts."
~ David O. McKay ~


"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."
~ Meister Eckhardt ~


Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don't already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don't know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you're tired and weary
Because it means you've made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are
also thankful for the setbacks.

GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles
and they can become your blessings.
~ Author Unknown ~
 
Hildegard

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 11:04 AM ( #2 )
Thank you, Bernie, for this bounty of quotes about gratefulness!

I am happy to learn that grateful caregivers are healthier than those who are not!

I like Meister Eckhart's saying best since it includes all!

Edda
Peace and joy!
bernie

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 11:14 AM ( #3 )
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
Meister Eckhart

A just person is one who is conformed and transformed into justice.
Meister Eckhart

All God wants of man is a peaceful heart.
Meister Eckhart

Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.
Meister Eckhart

Every creature is a word of God.
Meister Eckhart

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being made and let God be God in you.
Meister Eckhart

God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.
Meister Eckhart

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.
Meister Eckhart

If God gave the soul his whole creation she would not be filled thereby but only with himself.
Meister Eckhart

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.
Meister Eckhart

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.
Meister Eckhart

One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God.
Meister Eckhart

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.
Meister Eckhart

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.
Meister Eckhart

The more we have the less we own.
Meister Eckhart

The outward man is the swinging door; the inner man is the still hinge.
Meister Eckhart

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great.
Meister Eckhart

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.
Meister Eckhart

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
Meister Eckhart

To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.
Meister Eckhart

Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
Meister Eckhart

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.
Meister Eckhart

What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.
Meister Eckhart

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
Meister Eckhart

When you are thwarted, it is your own attitude that is out of order.
Meister Eckhart

Words derive their power from the original word.
Meister Eckhart

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.
Meister Eckhart
 
 
buttington

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 11:29 AM ( #4 )
Dear Bernie,
thank you especially for the "Be Thankful" quote. It came at a time when life became very difficult for me this afternoon.
It helped.
 
Jude
Love is the only way
bernie

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 12:05 PM ( #5 )
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
Helen Keller

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
Helen Keller

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
Helen Keller

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Helen Keller

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller

College isn't the place to go for ideas.
Helen Keller

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
Helen Keller

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller

Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
Helen Keller

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Helen Keller

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
Helen Keller

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Helen Keller

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.
Helen Keller

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.
Helen Keller

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
Helen Keller

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.
Helen Keller

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.
Helen Keller

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.
Helen Keller

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
Helen Keller

It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
Helen Keller

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.
Helen Keller

Knowledge is love and light and vision.
Helen Keller

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Helen Keller

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
Helen Keller

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.
Helen Keller

Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
Helen Keller

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.
Helen Keller

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.
Helen Keller

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
Helen Keller

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
Helen Keller

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.
Helen Keller

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.
Helen Keller

Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.
Helen Keller

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
Helen Keller

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.
Helen Keller

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
Helen Keller

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.
Helen Keller

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.
Helen Keller

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!
Helen Keller

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Helen Keller

The highest result of education is tolerance.
Helen Keller

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
Helen Keller

The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.
Helen Keller

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
Helen Keller

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
Helen Keller

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
Helen Keller

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
Helen Keller

True happiness... is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
Helen Keller

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
Helen Keller

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
Helen Keller

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.
Helen Keller

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
Helen Keller

We may have found a cure for most evils; but we have found no remedy for the worst of them all, the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.
Helen Keller

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.
Helen Keller

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Helen Keller

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
Helen Keller

While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
Helen Keller

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.
Helen Keller
 
 
Hope coach

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 12:12 PM ( #6 )
Bernie
I'm so grateful for all your research and quotes I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a training for behavioral health providers and care givers on the techniques of gratitude your an ispiration and have raised my confidence on why this training is needed
Hope coach
God I gratefully await and accept your miracles for me that I may be a witness to your wonder
bernie

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/1/2009 12:41 PM ( #7 )
To the real Jonathan Seagull, who lives within us all.
 
...way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practicing.
 
...there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
 
Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
 
Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand  lives, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth.
 
The same rule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.
 
Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom... and precision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature... Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too...
 
His race to learn had begun.
 
(Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull)
 
 
 
lilsparrow

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/2/2009 7:04 AM ( #8 )
Dear Bernie . . .
I am quite breathless from your posts . . .
each one of your quotes on gratitude is a shining jewel,
and I can tell you
that I am a testament to the verity of them
(maybe not visibly, but internally).
I discovered the active power of gratitude
about seven or eight years ago,
when I rather reluctantly began keeping a gratitude journal.
It has made a dramatic difference in how I percieve life,
and how I live it,
and how I process what ocurrs within its framework.
I don't know if people on the outside see it,
but from within this skin
the change has
(and still is becoming)
profound.
I thank you for these quotes,
so neatly written and arranged for me
with love . . .
sparrow

everything counts...
lilsparrow

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/3/2009 3:40 PM ( #9 )
"Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life."
Oprah Winfrey
everything counts...
buttington

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/3/2009 4:09 PM ( #10 )
Brilliant!!
Love is the only way
liliwings

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RE: Power of Gratitude... - 3/3/2009 4:49 PM ( #11 )
Wowwww bernie, I did not know that you have been posting all of these wise words here.  Wonderful quotes.  Thank you thank you !! I would comment on a specific one.  But alas, there are too many that speak to me.
 
Sparrow, thank you "Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life."
So many people use "things" to compensate.  The misperception that has led to so much division and pain for humanity.  I am grateful that its all shifting now.  Sending love to all,  liliwings
 
 
No need to spend endless hours, days, weeks searching for the rainbow.  Open your heart and your eyes to see and know you are the rainbow you seek.  Rejoyce in the beauty of the co-creation of you.

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