We tend to focus on our problems in life and to take for granted our blessings and achievements. It is natural that we think about the difficulties we face and the challenges we have to overcome but there is a real danger that when we do this we can become become weighed down with worry or negative feelings. It is good to step back for a moment from our day to day cares and to list all the things that are going well in our life. It will give us a positive lift and help to put our problems into perspective. Here is one way to count your blessings.
1. Life. Start by giving yourself one point for being alive. It may sound silly but wait a moment. Your life represents a tiny interlude between the vast times when you did not exist and when you will be dead. You are in that tiny moment right now and you can do things to change your life so be thankful for that at least.
2. Health. If you are healthy and do not suffer from any major diseases or afflictions mark up another point. We take our health for granted and only realise how important it is when we become ill. Most of us have some minor ailments but if you are reasonably healthy then you are much better off than people suffering from serious illnesses and you should be deeply thankful.
3. Relationship. If you are in a stable relationship with another person then chalk up a point. If you can honestly say that you love them and they love you then give yourself a bonus point. Many people search for love without success so if you have found it then cherish it and count yourself lucky.
4. Family. If you have children, brothers or sisters or your parents alive then add another point. They may be frustrating and they will have their faults but they are your flesh and blood. Whatever happens in life your family remains your family and if you have them around you then you should be thankful for that – just ask someone who has lost family members.
5. Work. Give yourself a point if you are in work or full-time education. Even if it is dull and unfulfilling at times you are still better off than the many people who are desperately seeking employment.
6. Value. If you can honestly say that you are doing something that makes life better for other people and adds real value then give yourself a point. This might involve your work, your volunteering, your parenting or some other aspect of your life. Are you making the world a better place? If not then this is an area to think about.
7. Achievement. Can you look back on something that you are proud of? Did you achieve something worthwhile? This might be at work, in sport, with your family or something else. If you can you point to something that people would admire then give yourself another point.
8. Future – 1. Do you have something good to look forward to? This might be a holiday, a promotion, a wedding or just a trip to the cinema with your partner. If you have something good coming up then think about it, smile and add another point.
9. Future – 2. Do you have a plan for your improvement and success? This might include your career, your education, your finances and your relationships. If you have a plan then add a point. You are better off than most of the population. People with plans generally do better than those who just muddle along.
10. Financial security. Are you financially secure? Are you living within your means? Can you see a reasonably prosperous future? If so you are much better placed than people who are burdened with excessive debts and who struggle to make ends meet. You should get some satisfaction from that and you can add a point.
11. Friendship. Do you have one or more good friends who you can share your joys and problems with? Is there someone whose company you enjoy and with whom you can have a laugh? If so give yourself a final point.
Add up your total. How many points did you get? The maximum is 12. Eight or over is a good score. Now take a moment to express thanks for your success and good fortune. You have a lot to be grateful for.
Image: Pixietart
Click here to join Lifehack on Facebook!
Paul Sloane is an author and speaker on leadership, innovation and lateral thinking. His most recent book is The Innovative Leader. He helps organizations improve innovation, creativity and leadership. He is the founder of Destination Innovation. He has written 15 books of lateral thinking puzzles and hosts the lateral puzzles forum.Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/PaulSloane.
Share This
This is not a post about teaching, but teaching is what I do and what I know best, and this post is about thinking about what we do.
People often wonder if I find it frustrating to be a university instructor. I teach topics that students resist a lot – in Women’s Studies, I teach with an explicitly political edge, challenging students to face up to the realities of social and economic injustices; in anthropology, I have to bring students to see the value of practices that they find disgusting or blasphemous (or both). While I have my share, maybe even more than my share, of students who really “get it”, I also have a good number of students who resist me at every turn, who are personally affronted by nearly every thing I say.
“Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re wasting your time?” people ask me. “Doesn’t it feel futile when they don’t change at all?”
The answer is that no, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. Not in the least. Granted, it can be frustrating in the heat of the moment. Students often look to their professors for truths that we simply can’t give – what we can give are outlines of various theories and arguments and help lead our students to understand their ramifications. And in the absence of hard, fast truths, some students just shut down, and it’s a real bear to re-engage them.
But for the most part, even the most resistant student doesn’t discourage me. A couple years ago I had a student who expressed his resentment of every single thing I taught by reading a paper in class. It was, of course, intended as an insult, but I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now. I consider that one of my highest successes.
Wait, what? How can a student ignoring me be a success? Simple: I take a longer view than 16 weeks (the length of a semester).
Everyone knows about the Butterfly Effect, right? The idea is that in a interconnected chaotic system, like the global environment, small events can turn into big consequences. A butterfly flapping its wings in China might whip up the tiniest of atmospheric disturbances which, as it interacts with the forces in the environment, is magnified and intensified until it sets off a massive hurricane in the Caribbean.
Teaching is like that. We set off butterflies in the mind, whose wing-flaps have little effect today and tomorrow but which, somewhere down the line, might blossom into a full-blown mental hurricane – a brainstorm, if you will.
(A professor I knew in grad school preferred a somewhat more military metaphor: mind-bombs. We plant landmines, in the hopes that someday our students will stumble across them and *BOOM!* I find the image of explosions in my students heads a little overly graphic for my own taste; butterflies are, I think, a little less objectionable.)
In the long view, I don’t have to be convincing. I don’t even have to be right (though I like to think I am more often than I’m not). Being convincing, being right – these are beside the point. The real outcome of the work I do day in and day out will come months, years, even decades down the road, and I won’t be around to see it. My job, as I see it, is simply to cultivate butterflies – to lay out a set of facts, theories, and ideas and make sure my students know what they are. The ones that resist, the ones that are so deeply offended, they’ll have their whole lives to think about this stuff, to argue with it, to reason out why it doesn’t apply to them or to the people around them.
In case you’re thinking that I can take this fuzzy-headed view towards my work because I teach in the fuzzy-headed liberal arts, think again. I was an engineering major lo these many years ago, and while my professors may not have realized it, they too took the long view. The professor of fluid dynamics doesn’t stop to ask whether her student will be building missiles or wheelchairs, machine guns or microsurgical instruments, she just teaches the physics. She, too, is cultivating butterflies.
Here comes the point: we are all cultivating butterflies. To some extent, everything we do has the potential to set off a chain reaction that results in something HUGE months, years, decades in the future. And most of the time, we don’t have any idea, can’t have any idea, what that butterfly moment is or what it will result in.
What we can know is that we’re doing it. That the work we do today isn’t just about today, that it doesn’t have to be finished, closed-off, polished and perfected and done. That it’s ok to leave things open-ended, to let them unfold like a butterfly’s wings as she emerges from her cocoon, to let them surprise us with their iridescent beauty – or disappoint us with their moth’s-wing drabness.
Far from frustrating me, the part that’s out of my control is what makes it possible for me to do the job in front of me. If I had to “convert” all my students, I couldn’t do it. It’s the uncertainty of what they’ll do with what I can teach them, even the ones that hate me and hate the material and hate the class – it’s that uncertainty that makes it possible to teach at all. What about you? How do you cultivate butterflies – or plant mines – in your job? Or in your life?
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
Share This
