Tag Archives: change

Gratitude and Thanks

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cat sitting with two booksPerhaps the most basic step or action to making a difference and changing the world and oneself is gratitude. Appropriately gratitude was one of the first “little things” we wrote about in Spirit Moxie’s Conversation posts. “Give Thanks” was published more than ten years ago in December 2013, just a few months after Spirit Moxie was launched. In the book, Moxie Moves: 10 easy ways to make a powerful difference, which explains the idea of Spirit Moxie more clearly, “Be Grateful” is move #2. 

So, we’ve written about this. But sometimes we need reminders, and, for fun, to play with distinctions. Today I’d like to claim that one distinction is collective and one is personal.  What might feel counterintuitive however, is that “thank you” is the collective one.

While working on this Conversation, I decided to post a TikTok (one of my new experiments in reaching more people) on “saying thank you,” as being one of the little things that can change the world. While planning the post, I realized something that now seems obvious. Saying, “thank you,” besides being an automatic response engrained into you by your parents, also acknowledges that someone has done something for you. (Duh). And, when you examine that statement, pure connection and possibility emerges. (Wow!) 

spiderwebSurviving as a human is pretty much impossible without other humans. So we can see “thank you” as an acknowledgement of the web—or maybe a strand that is part of the web—that connects us one to another. Saying, “thank you” to that other human being who bagged your groceries, opened a door, or handed you a cup of coffee can expand your appreciation for humans in general. What about the rude receptionist? The tired take out clerk who would have gotten the order wrong if you hadn’t checked? Remember, they are also human. 

One of the things I do that sometimes amazes my friends is get around using only public transportation. It has become essential for me to say “thank you” to the drivers when I leave a bus. Sometimes that “thank you” evokes the response of a “have a great day.” Sometimes however, I’m not sure the driver hears me. Sometimes the driver initiates the “have a great day” exchange. I always listen to see if others also say, “thank you.” Many do. This person just drove more than 12 tons of machinery safely so you can get where you’re going. We are connected to them via webs and strands.

So “thank you” supports and acknowledges the collective, the interactive web of being human that makes it possible for you to be you. It also reminds us of our place in that collective.

Collage of flowers and wine; a tree; pedicureGratitude, on the other hand, is personal, although sometimes it is expressed publicly and certainly can be seen to touch thanks. Being grateful is not so much an acknowledgement of an action or experience as a perception of how that action or experience has affected you. Gratitude changes the way the world appears to us and makes us more productive and effective, a result scientifically studied by such writers as Shawn Achor. Gratitude certainly helps us be happier. One can start integrating this into our lives by simply noticing or listing three to five things every day that you are grateful for from yesterday or that are underway right now. 

Through my friend and mentor Scott Mills, I learned the power of expanding on gratitude. Name the action, event, or situation for which you are grateful and then for five minutes or more describe it in more detail. Include how and why it makes you grateful as well whatever you remember about it. I suggest ending with a few of those “thank you” threads. 

I know thanks and gratitude change the world and are tremendously important. But I also see these as easy and integral ways to claim the power of the collective and the power of ourselves. It is the collective that makes changing the world truly possible. 

So welcome to being human. Whom did you thank today? How and for what are you grateful?

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Dalí sitting with books (Moxie Moves – link to printer! – and Talking to Trees) – Spirit Moxie
The thanks video is also on Instagram
Web (2011) – alijava
Gratitude collage: wine and flowers; tree; pedicure – Spirit Moxie

Choose Your Extravagances

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A couple of weeks ago, I asked some friends which “little thing” on the current list of little things we can do to change the world I should write about next. “Choose your extravagances” leaped out to them. It is number 10 on the original list of 100, so it was part of my initial determination of what small things could, indeed, change the world.

Jaguar parked by garageBut what did I mean by extravagances when I first listed this in 2013? There aren’t any notes, but I’m pretty sure the why and how of this has expanded, if not changed.

In 2013, I think I viewed this as meaning, “don’t be wasteful.” That’s still valid. Do you really need “that” car, coat, or shiny object? Sometimes the answer is, “yes.” My partner always wanted a Jaguar, could afford one, and took great delight in driving it. Sometimes the answer is “really?” An example might be that expanded time share I almost never use that might both pay for itself and give me more options. But in this conversation, when talking about the things beyond necessities, often the answer is, “no.” NO! This is your own list. One friend actually functions better with his morning Starbucks americano. I can do just fine with coffee at home or at my local diner. Because I consciously choose to not own very much stuff, my examples are different from yours. Because I use public transportation well, a ride share service such as Uber or Lyft is an extravagance for me. But on my last visit to Cincinnati and during my “do I want to live in Thailand” experience,  ride shares were usually the only option for getting places. I also have friends who have exclusively used ride shares, along with walking and maybe riding bikes, when they’ve chosen not to have a car.

Now I think there is another part of “choose your extravagances.” Deliberately select some extravagances. The key word here is “deliberately.” First, we live in a time where denying yourself is seen as virtuous. Think of that diet. Think of wanting to do what everyone else is doing but money and time are saying, “no.” Think about the idea that really wanting more of anything is wrong.

Now think of “extravagances” as one way of enjoying and participating in this world we think might benefit from some change. Perhaps it is to always have real whipped cream on your pie or whole milk in your latte. For me, I realized I enjoy going out to eat and travel more than new clothes or the latest phone. Do I ever buy clothes or replace electronics? Yes. But my monthly spending plan has an inordinate amount allotted to restaurants and the credit card I use gives me perks when traveling. 

Flat white with design on topThe diet example is maybe the easiest to understand. I usually ask for no cheese on sandwiches and omelettes as for me cheese only adds calories rather than flavor. But I enjoy good cheese with bread or crackers before dinner or even for dessert. Sometime in my late teens I decided cream and sugar in my coffee weren’t worth the calories, especially because I usually drank coffee with desserts. But now I have friends who will tell you that enjoying good coffee, usually black, is something they identify with me.

Sunrise over evergreensNote the phrase above of “enjoying and participating.” Enjoying the world is certainly central to having it be the world you know it could be. (“Changing the world” as the Spirit Moxie tagline reads.) When you are only angry with your partner or children, they never have a chance to blossom and be great around you. But when you enjoy being with them, enjoy their idiosyncrasies, and sometimes participate in what they love, something more beautiful than all of you becomes possible. Yes, I know that example is a bit simplistic. But think of our world the same way. What do you want to indulge in that is beautiful, extravagant, and that also, in some way, serves who you are? Getting up early to watch a sunrise? Ordering the real butter and the bread basket? Buying the shoes or spending the extra $40 for an upgraded airplane seat (yup – just did that)? And so, we participate. Not with something just because it’s there, but because it provides satisfaction and maybe a bit of joy. 

Sparkling wine and goldfish crackersYour list will be different from mine. I’m pretty sure you can’t imagine that sandwich without cheese and that you find delight in the cheapest ticket you can find when traveling. But watch and choose. My friend bought the most expensive champagne she could find when she sold her house. She drinks a low cost Costco white wine otherwise. 

Choose YOUR extravagances. And share what they are! Hearing about them adds to our enjoyment. Yes having and naming your extravagances will add to and change the world.

 

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Images from the top:

The Jaguar — Spirit Moxie
Flat white in New Zealand — Spirit Moxie
Sunrise — Teresa O’Bryant
Sparkling wine at Evoke Winery tasting room (Vancouver, WA) —Spirit Moxie

The Problem of Change

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Butterfly on leafSpirit Moxie is now 10 years old, and many of the ideas we introduced in 2013 have become commonplace. Our central concept focuses on the power of positive change, but when we look around, it feels as if, rather than becoming more positive, the world has become darker: politics uglier, the environment more fragile, people less connected, and information and news increasingly unreliable. We have the tools to correct this. There are actions and mindsets to help prevent these problems! So why do they still exist?

First of all, even though we cheer the idea of change, we are programmed to resist it. Perhaps it’s stating the obvious, but our brains are wired for survival. However “wrong” or uncomfortable conditions are, if we didn’t die during any of what has happened or through our personal actions or experiences, our brain view the status quo safe. Note: you didn’t die. I know this because you’re reading this. So while this may sound simplistic, even though change might sound good, we naturally resist it. 

Quite apart from what we consider positive action, this orientation shows up in everything from not brushing our teeth as often as we should to forgetting to put on our seatbelt to not using the gym. Often it isn’t a case of will power or remembering, but just a result of our having done just fine in the past. Why risk something different?

An extension of this reason to resist change is that change can be threatening. Change, by definition, means that things will be different. It takes us to unknown places. 

What’s interesting is that we seldom consciously see any of this. Let’s consider a few more of our default places when our actions and possible change collide. First we really like ease. There are different versions of ease for different people, but if rinsing out the bottle so it can be safely recycled  isn’t your norm, it is much easier to just throw the bottle in the trash. For some people. it is easier to drop something onto the ground than to walk two feet to the trash can. We might deplore waste yet never bring our own reusable bags to the store. I’m pretty sure most of these are United States examples, but these instances of ease involve anything that you’ve always done.Why should you change? It’s more comfortable to keep doing what you always have done? What examples can you see others doing? We usually don’t see them when we do them ourselves. 

The flip side of this is that many of us are programmed to think that something can’t be effective unless it is difficult. Spirit Moxie talks about doing “little things to change the world.” What’s dramatic or sexy about those as actions? Many of us figure that unless we’re curing world hunger, negotiating for peace, and evening out the economy on a national level, it isn’t worth talking about. If getting up at 5 am to get more done is a sign of being pro active, a little thing called “sleep*,” which we say here is one of the things that changes the world, can be completely discounted.  This might be a bit of hyperbole, but for example, while I celebrate (in my mind) every time a server in a restaurant doesn’t give me a straw, my son rolls his eyes and discounts it. Why should something that little matter?

Something else that almost certainly hinders change is our excessive attention to what isn’t working. One of the best and most insidious example is our constant preoccupation with the media. There’s an apparently common belief that binge watching the news makes us accountable. I’m not talking about being informed. But hours of casual attention gives energy to much we don’t want to fuel. Balance this. When the media hungry are not being fed (watched and interacted with), it is increasing hard to justify the expense of giving them free publicity. Plus for many people, whether within the news, the neighborhood, the environment, or their friends and family, whatever isn’t working is their preferred topic of conversation. Why Joe and Mary are having a hard time because Sue is into drugs is seen as much more intense and interesting than that Sam got a Fulbright. Lamenting political options is more important than really engaging in helpful responses to issues. Etc.

Finally, when we know something is true, we don’t question it. Usually we can’t even see an alternative. But if in fact, a contrasting fact or varying viewpoint is even hinted about, and we do hear it, we certainly don’t weigh it and are often offended that anyone could be that blind, inconsiderate, stupid, or, to be honest, wrong. This eliminates positive change by default. We extend this to how we evaluate change. At some level, we could very easily be using artificial markers or evaluating their implications incorrectly. Is 20 people at the bus stop with bags of food from the Saturday free food program hosted near my house a sign of poverty, of the need for redistribution of resources, of people taking advantage of others, or of hope for better nutrition in the city? If one of those is your truth, that is what you see. If all those are new, you probably thought “of course.” And you almost certainly can come up with others I haven’t considered. A final part of this is to remember that, with the internet, falsehoods enter this mix and are received as unquestioned truth almost instantly.

So we’re wired for the security of our history, for perceived safety, for ease and the validation of hard work, and by our personal understanding of things, however we came by them. When positive change is happening, both globally and even personally, we quite possibly may simply not notice.

For Spirit Moxie, the force that makes positive change possible is an understanding of chaos. Remember that whenever you dare do a little thing to change the world, and others do too, you begin creating conditions where larger, almost certainly unexpected, change becomes possible. So reread where we began. 

Meanwhile hold, however lightly, that perhaps there is positive energy. That change is possible. And that you make a difference!

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Butterfly – picture by Spirit Moxie (or at least it was in our photos!)

*”Sleep” is included in Moxie Moves:10 easy ways to make a powerful difference – (Cincinnati: Spirit Moxie, 2019) -Amazon link