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Appreciation

Let’s take a look at the transformative power of appreciation. What is it, why is it important and how can we get better at it? To set the tone for this article, take a breath and find a gentle moment to read through this poem:

Pat Schneider

The Patience of Ordinary Things

by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?

How the cup holds the tea,

How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,

How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes

Or toes. How soles of feet know

Where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve been thinking about the patience

Of ordinary things, how clothes

Wait respectfully in closets

And soap dries quietly in the dish,

And towels drink the wet

From the skin of the back.

And the lovely repetition of stairs.

And what is more generous than a window?

Thank you Pat.

At its heart appreciation is really a form of self-compassion, of kindness, and of gratitude, and in this fast-paced, anxiety-inducing world it is all too easy to over look the simple, and often beautiful things that surround us.

Dr Rick Hanson, author and psychologist explains that we are hard-wired for survival, not happiness. Our primary motivations are survival based, and our sense survival is wrapped up in fear. We default to fight or flight mode when we are stressed, our brain automatically shuts down creative and rational thinking and we resort back to a form of basic animal mode.

As our understanding of these mechanisms of the brain develops then why not our behaviour?

Neuro-plasticity is the ability of our brain to transform and re-learn new ways of being and thinking, and in this is the foundation of our ability to cultivate happiness.

Consider a method of appreciation developed by Dr Rick Hanson called 'Taking in the Good'.

Here we can learn to notice and focus on good things as they happen, enriching them before absorbing them and letting them go. 20-30 seconds is enough and it doesn't matter how small or big it is, the feeling of appreciation is what matters.

Whether its a promotion at work, hot water from the shower, a smile on the face of a child or friend, the warm spring sun stirring from it's wintery slumber, the feeling of a cool glass of water on the throat, or simply the ability to notice our own breath, life is full of wonders.

This practice is an antidote to that feeling of striving and never arriving. Like the next moment has some secret that this one doesn't.

The secret is, what we're looking for is here already.


Mindfulness helps us to see how much our thoughts and beliefs contribute to our own unhappiness. So if we can understand with compassion that our human experience is easily dominated by threat and negativity then we can take it less personally. Then we can begin to work with what we've got.

"If we're breathing then there is more right with us than wrong with us". – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Although we may not feel this - and life certainly throws us enough curve balls to put it into question - it is an attitude we can cultivate and develop.

The process itself is one of recognising and tending to our suffering, and recognising the good things, however small, as well.



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