Hello Movember, meet "Grovember" - How expressing Gratitude can change your life

As a useful complement to Movember, I suggest the practice of "Grovember" - using November to establish your daily habit of expressing Gratitude. By introducing a bias towards the positive and focusing on what you DO want (rather than lamenting what you don't want), you can break the downward spiral of depression and positively influence your thinking in ways that can dramatically improve the enjoyment of life and increase your levels of happiness.

We're now in Movember (the month formerly known as November) when many men grow a moustache to raise funds and awareness on two biggest health issues men face: prostate cancer and depression.

The overall intent is to work to change established habits and attitudes men have about their health, to educate men about the health risks they face, get them to act on that knowledge and increase the chances of early detection, diagnosis and effective treatment.

This year for the first time I'm having a go and raising money for charity in memory of my brother Jim, who died this year and who often suffered from bouts of deep depression.

Raising awareness of organizations (like Beyond Blue and Mensline in Australia) that exist to help men combat depression is important work. I think it's also important to offer men the tools for a bit of self-help DIY. That's what this post is about.

How you can combat depression - and live the best life you can!

A really effective way to combat depression, and to shift your state of mind in general for the better, is to cultivate an "attitude of gratitude"

One specific practice is to intentionally and regularly record positive appreciation in a Gratitude Journal. Here's how it works:

You write down five (or more) things every day that you are grateful for

That's it.

Even Don kept a journal!

Don't be fooled! Though simple, the practice it is a surprisingly powerful way both to get out of negative/depressed states of mind and to positively influence your thinking in ways that improve your enjoyment of life.

Depression is often the result of a pervasive, circular pattern of negative thoughts. Keeping a gratitude journal breaks that pattern and re-programs your mind to think more positively.

By regularly noticing and recording things for which you're grateful, you train your brain to focus on things you like about your life (and want to have in it) rather than the things you don’t. This simple practice, done consistently, can improve your whole perspective on life.

In her book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, University of California professor Sonja Lyubomirsky praises the practice of writing a Gratitude Journal as a good way to increase your level of happiness. In a nutshell, her research has found that "truly happy individuals construe life events and daily situations in ways that seem to maintain their happiness, while unhappy individuals construe experiences in ways that seem to reinforce unhappiness."

In other words, as Lincoln said:

"People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." 

Have a Go!
And so as well as taking part in Movember, I've started keeping a regular Gratitude Journal this month. What you write down doesn't have to be huge or mind-blowing. It might not matter to anyone but you. For example, my entries for today included:

1) taking time this morning to tend to the plants on the balcony and in the flat - gives me a sense of nurturance and feeling "grounded"
2) hearing about NaNoWriMo - feel inspired about doing more writing and like the idea as a way to increase connection with others while pursuing an inherently solitary activity
3) I like that I can get Dutch goodies like speculaas, hagelslag and honingkoek in Oz - yum! (feeding belly & soul, "ethnic" food)
4) liked reading the positive inspirational quotes that come through daily on my facebook page
5) enjoyed sitting on balcony this AM eating breakfast with the springtime Sydney sunshine on my face, a full day of coaching, meeting people and writing ahead of me, and an early surf session with some mates set up for tomorrow morning

You can write things in the AM - including things you're looking forward to with the clarity of mind that comes after a good sleep, or in the PM - recording what you've appreciated about the day and to symbolically end your day, heading off to sleep with a positive frame of mind. For my part, I'm doing both as I like the idea of having a morning-and-evening ritual.

Start your journal writing today, whether it's at the start or end of the day, or both!
Continue the daily habit of expressing Gratitude consistently through November and I bet you'll notice a difference in your life. Think of it as your own personal "Grovember". It's a practical habit that, as you have learned, can profoundly change your life. Who knows, maybe it'd be better to call it GROW-vember!

Finally, if you've found this post at all helpful then I'd love you to support my Movember fundraising efforts. All amounts are appreciated as every little bit helps. Remember, anything over $2 is tax-deductible.

What are you thinking...? Choose wisely!

A friend recently quipped: "What's the definition of optimism for an investment banker?" His answer: Ironing five shirts on a Sunday night.

While the times around us are changing, as they ever will, one thing remains the same: your power of choice. You can see any situation as a crisis or as an opportunity. As an ending or a new beginning.

This may sound trite and Pollyanna-ish to you, but rest assured there is good reason for you to cultivate an awareness of what choices you make during your each waking moment. Where you place your attention will determine your level of happiness...both now and later in your life.


We become what we think about all day long.

These words, attributed to the early 19th century American essayist, philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, neatly present the commonsensical insight of something that has now been confirmed by neuroscience.

In fact the book The Wisdom Paradox : How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older by neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg (see here for book excerpts and here for a short book review) makes a compelling argument that wisdom is essentially the ability to know what to do in a given situation and make good decisions, fast, based on having seen and dealt with similar situations in the past.

So like anything, practice makes better. Unsurprisingly, the way to become good at something is to do it often and to learn from your efforts.

In this way wisdom is not so different from playing a sport or a musical instrument - over time you build up memories of how to do something, which can be readily accessed later on by the fast, memory-building part of your brain (based in the limbic system).

So here's the lesson: if you practice playing the piano badly through your years of life, then you're only ever going to be a bad piano player (though you'll have very ready access to the skill of playing it badly!).

Similarly, if you continually cultivate a mindset focused on crisis, negativity, the downside, and being fearful, then later in life those are exactly the memories you'll most readily access and - hey presto - you're stuck in the same rut of continually thinking everything is rubbish.

Like giving up any vice or bad habit, however, it's never too late to quit and the positive effects can begin to add up immediately. If you begin to manifest positive aspects of your character, some of the noble qualities of what you're like when you are at your absolute best, then those are the attributes to which your brain will make the strongest connections. They will become habits, taking you upwards in a positive spiral towards greater happiness and a more hopeful outlook on life.

Even if you're doubtful of the science behind the matter, I think you'd agree that manifesting a character-filled approach to life by learning to focus on the possibilities rather than the negatives has relatively few down-sides. (Of course, if you're immediately prone to pointing out what the downsides might be, that in itself could be a useful piece of insight for you...!)

I'm reminded of a story about an executive who, no matter what news was presented to him, responded by saying "That's great!" Staff members bearing really negative messages were, to say the least, disconcerted by this reaction, until they learned to see the philosophy behind it - that nothing is unequivocably positive or negative in itself - it all has to do with the meaning we choose to attach to it. Like Hamlet says, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

What are you thinking about, all day long? And is that the way you want to think your whole life long...?
TM

Michael Rennie – McKinsey, meaning-making, mindsets and more…

It's been a week of serendipity...while researching something else entirely I came across this interview with Michael Rennie, whose name resonated because of a conversation I had on the weekend. His point of view converges entirely with the ideas I want to promote with this blog and deserves the widest possible audience, hence this post.

Rennie's a remarkable individual. Diagnosed at the age of 31 with terminal cancer and given at most 12 months to live, he embarked on both an inward journey (remember yesterday's post about the value of plumbing the depths...?) and a process of connecting outwardly with others.

He beat the cancer and now over a decade later has taken the lessons he learned in the process about meaning-making, meditation and changing mindsets into the world of large organizations. Today as global co-leader of McKinsey & Company's Mindsets and Capabilities practice he specializes in performance culture improvement and behaviour change in large organizations, working closely with Chairmen and their top teams on leadership performance.

The result is a compelling vision of transformational leadership for the 21st century.
Hope you enjoy what he has to say as much as I did.
TM


Michael Rennie: Head & Heart