The Power of Gratitude

Description

A conscious practice of gratitude can change our lives and the lives of everyone around us. This video shares one student's powerful exercise for making gratitude our "default" state of mind.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,gratitude

Video Transcription

one thing I always encourage students to do here re while the university is to start exploring gratitude and today I would like to share with you something that one of my students has developed for himself which is this amazing life-changing gratitude practice no gratitude is something that for a lot of us we feel gratitude when something special happens in our life and so you know someone does us a really good turn or you know we we get the super delicious meal set before us those are those those moments in life and something stands out and we naturally can feel gratitude for it but gratitude is this amazing amazing life quality that if we cultivate it can change the entire way that we view the world other people and ourselves the gratitude practice that I usually set before students is pretty simple in the morning and in the evening to stop and take a moment where you choose let's say three things in your life that you feel really really grateful for and it can be you know if you're if you're up there in the teepee and and and it's raining you might just be grateful for that canvas that's keeping the rain off of you it could be people in your life that you love could be the sounds of nature anything we choose three things but here's the thing instead of just saying you know doing it as a as a rote practice I'm grateful for that tree over there when you do these three things you try to really feel that gratitude and just look at that tree and appreciate it from the depth of your heart so that's the basic practice that I put before this Brett is out here and he is he's an amazing young man to be working with he's out here for a year and he took that a step further although he was doing a morning and an evening practice he also started to use gratitude whenever he noticed his mind move into a situation into a state of resistance so for instance you are he's cooking over the campfire and he's giving everything together and and his pot over terms and puts out his fire in his meal spills everywhere a moment of frustration and he stops and he says what he's grateful for he's been doing this you know he's up there living with mosquitoes and and spend more rain this this summer in Wisconsin than I think I've ever seen before and all sorts of things that have the potential to drive people crazy but there's his practice whenever something doesn't have to be really frustrating him whenever there's the tiniest little hint of stress or frustration or or anything else that's resistance based like that he stops and he chooses something that he's grateful for what this does is amazing it literally reprograms our minds some people fear that if you start appreciating everything that you won't then you know be going after anything in your life you will be striving or trying to attain goals it's it's very much the opposite you don't lose your ability to do things or to go after things but you do lose your ability to be stressed and frustrated about the inevitable small details that are going to go awry as we move through life instead we can actually start to find humor in those things and laugh at those things so it colors our entire life experience gratitude is it shouldn't just be something that happens when when something goes really well in our life it is too valuable it's it's too amazing to let it just crop up on its own we cultivate gratitude in our lives our lives change in ways that we can't even percy i would urge you to give it a try maybe that morning and evening gratitude practice of three things that you're grateful for or even better yet stop in any moment when you're feeling a little bit sad a little bit down a little bit frustrated a little bit stressed and find something in your in your mediate experience whether that's your mental experience or your your surrounding experience something that you are grateful for and feel that gratitude from the bottom of your heart see what happens love to hear your experiences with us as always please share in the comments below your experiences with gratitude and especially if you try either of these exercises what does it feel like what happens thanks for watching