Jeremy Adams Smith wrote an article called, "Six Habits of Highly Grateful People" in which he explores the qualities he has observed in truly appreciative people.  According to his research and observation these thankful people have six common traits.  One, they think about what life would be like without their daily luxuries, and then second they appreciate the things they have with renewed vigor.  Third, they choose to be thankful for the privileges they receive rather than taking them for granted because they "deserve them."  Fourth, grateful people are thankful for people as much, if not more than, the things and processions in their life.  Fifth, Smith observes that truly grateful people offer their loved ones specific thanks for what they do for them.  Lastly, and hardest of all, Smith challenges his readers to, "Thank Outside the Box."  This means to not only thanking the people who care for and help you, but also the people who have hurt you.  Smith leaves his readers with an incentive to achieve these six grateful habits he says that these six habits can help, "transform an obstacle into an opportunity...re-framing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude" (Smith).

I agree that the last step is the hardest.  I'm not sure if anyone, no matter how centered and grateful they are could ever completely master this one.  I also don't think that Smith meant that you literally have to go thank the people who hurt you.  You don't have to go to your old boss's office and thank her for firing you last year (although that would be something).  I think Smith is really trying to say that you thank them internally, or if not that, at least be grateful that the painful experince helped you grow as a person.  This semester I have blogged about some of the hard times I've had these last few months.  Some of them have been pretty devistating, others just tough to get through, but I have tried to stay positive about it all to help myself stay on top of things.  I've tried to stay mentally tough and by trying to be thankful for the obstacles I've over come.  I know I'm a much stronger person than I was when I started this college journey.  My stamina has probably quadrupled, with the amount of work I feel I can handle to even getting out of bed earlier every morning.  Some of the things that helped me to grow, were difficult to get through, but seeing them as blessings rather than hinderences definately helps me see my college in a much more positive light.




Works Cited

Smith, Jeremy Adam. "Six Habits of Highly Grateful People." The Berkely Blog. UC
Berkeley, n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. <http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/11/26/
six-habits-of-highly-grateful-people/>.

The Big Picture

In the "Spoiler Alert" post, I asked myself questions like, "What is all this for anyway?  Why am I working so hard?  What was it that made me so excited about college in the first place?"  It all leads back to a sense of purpose in what you do. Without a sense of strong purpose what's the point of being motivated?  Things like persistence and confidence are great qualities and important skills, but they can't stand on their own.  They need that sense of purpose to back them up. This post is sort of an extension of the post on gratitude.  In that post, I said it feels like you're running in place if you don't have the motivation you need.  I suggested that gratitude can help you find that motivation.  Gratitude is an important link in the greater purpose of everything you do.  Things that I am thankful for, my family and friends, my pets, music, literature, the opportunities I'm given, all make me motivated to do my best in college.  The things I'm most thankful for remind me of what's most important to me, and so inspire me to persist in the work I'm doing at TLU.  Being reminded of the bigger picture, and the purpose and meaning behind what i do serves as the motivation I need to make it through my college work.

Another big motivation for me, is thinking about my future.  The dreams I have about getting a master's degree, starting a career, and moving to Austin among other things help me put things in terms of this bigger picture.  It reminds me that things don't end here, they are only beginning.  This helps me push through all the hard work and tough days when I ask myself the questions I mentioned earlier.  Looking ahead to starting a career that I love, makes working through my homework seem totally worth it like I know it is, and thinking about getting my master's degree makes the work that I'm doing now seem much easier and worth the extra time I give to it.  When I think about the bigger picture, I realize that everything I'm learning now is preparing me for my bright future ahead!  this is the greater purpose that I'm working towards, the reasons behind my motivation!

Gratitude

This whole semester I've been blogging about the role of mental toughness in university life.  I have sited things like persistence, confidence, determination and motivation as definitions of mental toughness.  All of these things are both the cause and effect of staying mentally tough.  You need all of these abilities to survive the work load and ultimately succeed in college.  This week, I'm going to add a new word to this list of essential tools: gratitude.  At first, this one may not appear to belong alongside the others, but when I think about it, gratitude has helped me get through some of my toughest moments  during my first semester.  I can be persistent and motivated until my arms fall off, but without something to back this determination up, I'm just running in place. I won't be getting anywhere fast.  In my toughest moments, when I feel like there is too much work to handle, like everything is spiraling out of my control, and I can't get a handle on anything, one thing that has kept me sane is gratitude.  Actually, more accurately it has been the ability to slow down and catch my breath, because when you feel like you're spinning out of control, the first thing you need to do is steady yourself.  But once I'm steady and begin to think more clearly about the situation, I try to remember how lucky I am to be here at college and how grateful I really am to have this opportunity to learn and grow in a university setting.  Whenever I start to feel down, something always comes around that makes me put my struggles in perceptive.  According to the united States Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 66.2% of high-school graduates in America end up enrolling at college ("College Enrollment and Work").  When I slow down and get a better look at where I am, I have to be grateful that I'm here at all.  Even in the tough moments, I have to be grateful that I am in that 66%.  Being grateful for the opportunities I'm given while at college makes me so much more prepared to give my all to the work that's expected of me.  Gratitude belongs in the essential list of tools needed for success at college because it is the backbone of mental toughness.  Without the ability to slow down and be thankful for what you have, how can you continue to be motivated and confident?  There is no motivation without a little gratitude.  Don't be so busy pressing through college life that you forget to be thankful that you're here.  Gratitude is an important important part of staying mentally tough and staying motivated in college life.


Works Cited

"College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2012 High School Graduates." Bureau of 
     Labor Statistics. United States Department of Labor, Oct. 2012. Web. 25 
     Nov. 2013. <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm>. 

Music and Memory

Last weekend I got to participate in a very cool event.  I first heard about the event from a flier hung on the mirror of the women's restroom in the music building.  The little square flier proclaimed the name of the event to be the "Music and Memory Benefit Dinner."  The pictures of the jazz band silhouette caught my eye and the mention of free food and t-shirts (a good enough incentive for any college student).  Later that day, I heard about it from a friend of mine in band who strongly suggested I go.  Then after receiving an invite on Facebook from my friends, I was committed to going.  I was definitely looking forward to Sunday afternoon. 

I showed up early to the event with one of my friend.  We went in together finding we were the first ones to show up.  People were running around trying to get things set up when we arrived, but we got first pick at the t-shirt table and got to watch the jazz band set up.  Once more people came, we interrupted our conversation to go get a bowl of soup each of us digging in our wallets for money to put in the donations basket.  My favorite part of the event was getting to hear the jazz band.  Their music filled every inch of the building: jazzy piano, saxophones, trumpets, drums, and bass.  You could tell they were having fun, and their talent did not disappoint.  I was trying to hold back the stupid grin that always comes out when I'm presented with loud live music.  There was nowhere I would have rather been.

Later, a video showing the purpose of the event was played.  This was not the first time I had seen the video.  Earlier that week one of my professors had shown it in class, and I had shown it to my family the day before.  Each time it brought tears in my eyes to see the powerful impact music can have in a person's life.  In the video, a story was told about a man in a nursing home who was unresponsive when talked to, someone who had lost the memory of who he wass and who is family was.  The Music and Memory Organization buys ipods for people like this man to be filled with their favorite music from when they were growing up to before they began to loose their memories.  The video showed a nurse giving the man his headphones, and the difference it made for him was astounding.  The speaker in the video commented that before given the headphones, this man was barely alive.  When the music was on, however, the man's entire face lit up, and he began humming and moving along.  Even once the headphones were taken away, he was eager to talk about what he had been listening to, and to tell about what he had liked as a boy.  It was miraculous.

Music has always meant a lot to me ever since I was very little and listening to Disney princess songs.  No matter what kind of music, it lights me up the way it did the man in the video.  Maybe there aren't words to accurately express the impact music has on us.  Music is a language all its own, and to me their is something magical about it that just can't be explained.  Music is something to be experienced.  In the case, of this man, and others who have been helped by this organization, music brought back their sense of identity.  I feel honored to have been a part of supporting this spectacular cause.

No Second Chances

I wrote this post the morning after I heard some tragic news.  At the time, I didn't have the heart to post it.  It's been sitting in my Gmail inbox, where I store all of my unfinished posts, waiting for me to come back to it.  Here is what I wrote:

Last night, I heard some terrible, awful news.  Someone that I used to know when I was younger was in a motorcycle accident.  It said in the paper that he was in critical condition, but last night we got a call that his family took him off life support.  I really didn't know him very well, but I used to think he was cute when I was little, and I still remember the magic trick he taught me at an open house for our church. His death came as such a shock to me.

He was only two years older than me.

He didn't even get a second chance. It seems so wrong that someone should die when they're just reaching the peak of life. It's just such a waist, such an injustice. I cried my eyes out in disbelief. How do you deal with something like that? He was there and now he's not. He doesn't even exist anymore. I can't imagine what his family is going through. I don't even want to.
I guess it makes me think, "that could have been me." It makes me not want to take anything for granted, to let people know how I feel, to seize every opportunity, to do what I love for as long as I can. Just like that, all your chances could be gone. What chances do I pass over everyday. Probably dozens. He had the chance to wear his helmet. He didn't take it. No second chance. 
I'll always do my best to remeber him by trying to take a few more of those opportunities every day.  Everytime I buckle my seat bealt or put on a helmet, I think of him.  I will never make the same mistake he did.  It's just not worth the conciquences.  I'm so sorry that his life had to end so soon, so sorry.  My insides ache with regret for him and sympathy for his family.  I will try to honor him by not taking my life or my safety for granted.  We are all so breakable.  Bones and hearts can be broken in the blink of an eye. 

Juggling Eggs

My little nugget of wisdom for today was given to me through a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip.  Calvin, a cynical, suburban six-year-old with the mind of a future philosopher opens the cartoon by carrying in a carton of eggs and announcing that he wishes to juggle them.  His stuffed tiger, Hobbes, brought to life through Calvin's imagination offers concern, but Calvin is persistent saying, "its a metaphor for life Hobbes!"  Unfortunately, like life, his endeavor doesn't turn out the way he had expected.  Anyway, see for yourself...

The theme of my Composition class this semester is persistence.  My professor likes to call it "mental toughness," which sounds much more dramatic and impressive.  I think mental toughness is a vital quality for anyone who wants to be successful at anything whether its a college, a career, or juggling eggs.  If you give up on the first try, you'll never know if you can handle it.  OK, so maybe you don't have to try juggling eggs, but as Calvin so wisely points out, it can serve as a metaphor for the more important things.  My parents have refereed to my transition to college as my transition to "real life" many times this semester.  "Hey, you wanna go do something fun?  Oh, you can't?  You have homework?  Oh well, welcome to real life."  With the beginning of my "real life," I have been learning the truth in this little comic strip.  Calvin says that, "each egg represents of life's concerns."  If I assigned a few of my life's concerns to five eggs, I'd say one of them is homework, one is my family, another is my new friends, one is my responsibilities as a college student, the last is any free time left over for me.  Calvin is right when he says that the key is balancing the different concerns.  If one egg takes to long to get out of your hand, the others will all crash to the ground, and from the looks of Calvin's living room, cleaning up the mess is no easy task.  In our Freshman Experience course (a course required at TLU that teaches freshman how to read and perform like good college students) we had a class on time management, something I am no expert at.  They may as well have been teaching me how to juggle eggs.  The longer I go along, though, the more I'm learning how to balance my busy college schedule, and move each egg from hand to hand fast enough that I don't drop any.  Even if I do drop a couple along the way, which I'm sure is inevitable, I'll remember to be persistent.  There is no fifth box in the cartoon that shows what Calvin does next, but if there was, I'd bet that Calvin runs to the kitchen for another carton of eggs and maybe gets Hobbes to join him for a round.  Most likely they'd make an even bigger mess, but after all, "the important thing is persistence."

Works Cited

Watterson, Bill. It's a Magical World: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection. Kansas
City: Andrews and McMeel, 1996. Print.

My Life as a Movie

One of the great luxuries of homeschooling, and a major difference between homeschooling and public school is that you don't have to go to school if you don't feel like it.  This means on a sunny day you can take the day off to go swimming, or on a rainy day you can take the day off to watch movies (there's an excuse no matter what the weather).  You can always make it up, of course, on the weekends, but this is one of the splendors of homeschooling.  A couple weeks ago I felt the absence of this luxury.  I woke up to rain puring down outside my window.  I realized that this would be  my first experience of a rainy day at school.  I complained about it before I left home, my mom not helping matters when she reminded me of rainy days in the past, "If you weren't in college we could be watching movies today..."  You do want me to go to college right?  "I'm just kidding, have a good day!" (pitying smile)

Once I got to school though and was walking to my classes in the rain with my little red umbrella, I actually began to enjoy myself.  Even though I had the worst hair day of the semester, all damp and curly, and even though I soaked my converse to the skin when I stepped in a four inch deep puddle, I still managed to enjoy my rainy school day.  I felt like a character in a movie, when everything is always so romanticized, even going to class.  The brick sidewalk in front of the library looked lovely in the rain, and kids were all wearing their polka-dotted rain boots.  Call me a romantic, but it gave the campus a poetic feel all gloomy and drizzly.

All the differences in my life, at least so far, have been mostly enjoyable for me.  I suppose I'm glad that I tend to take a romantic view of things.  Without it, I think I would begin to resent some of these
changes rather than seeing them as novel.  I'm a little nervous that as my college experience continues, I will begin to loose more and more of my previous luxuries.  I'll just continue to try to view things through my rose tinted glasses.