I have named this chapter 'Pollyanna lurking in my black, black heart' just for fun. You will recall, perhaps, the little girl who is the heroine in the popular book, Pollyanna, written by Eleanor H Porter.
Pollyanna was the sweet (maybe saccharine) lass whose cheerful optimism was irrepressible, and the words 'Pollyanna' and 'Pollyannish' have entered our language, as seen in this entry from the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
Main Entry: Pol·ly·an·na
Pronunciation: "pä-lE-'a-n&
Function: noun
Etymology: Pollyanna, heroine of the novel Pollyanna (1913) by Eleanor Porter died 1920 American fiction writer
Date: 1921
: a person characterized by irrepressible optimism and a tendency to find good in everything
- Pollyanna adjective
- Pol·ly·an·na·ish /-'a-n&-ish/ also Pol·ly·an·nish /-'a-nish/ adjective
Mr Micawber
| Charles
Dickens, in David Copperfield, has a character with a similar outlook of eternal optimism, Mr Wilkins Micawber, who just knew that "something will turn up". Of course, Mr Micawber is a somewhat silly character, and we all know that if someone calls you a Micawber, or Pollyannish, they are not paying you a compliment, but pulling your leg. |
In former days, to be called a Pollyanna or a Micawber was not considered such an embarrassment, but since the literary appearance of those characters, the world has experienced many changes, including many wars of unbelievable ferocity. No wonder it became so unfashionable to be optimistic; the German
writer, Bertolt Brecht wrote, "He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news".
That just about sums up the attitude of much of today's world. But is it a healthy attitude? Is it an essential attitude, or do we have some choice in it, day by day, hour by hour? What is 'attitude', anyway? If I want to change, how can I change? And how can we be optimistic, without being fools? For years I wrestled with these questions.
Some months before I reached the crisis in my life (my nervous breakthrough) I even went to a counsellor, because of just one of a number of things that were unravelling my life. I knew I was stuck in a mode of thought about another person, and in consequent behaviours that I didn't want
– that I felt ashamed of. Let me correct that: one part of me didn't want to be thinking and behaving a certain way. But obviously, one part of me did, because I was still doing it. For an individualist such as I actually to ask for advice shows I must have been desperate.
At that stage, I didn't realise how simple it is to choose one inner 'Pip Wilson' over another 'Pip'. So I told the counsellor the way the fence-sitting in my head
– the inability to stop thinking in ways I didn't like – was tearing me to bits. "How can I change?" was my only request.
"Hmmmm," he said, and I paid the receptionist each time on the way out. I suspect he didn't know the answer to that one simple question, as most people don't. But the answer is right under our noses all the time. We have choice. And it's all about attitude.
What is 'attitude' anyway?
Attitude is anatomy. Anatomy is meat.
Attitude is in the body. Again, let Messrs Merriam and Webster illuminate:
Main Entry: at·ti·tude
Pronunciation: 'a-t&-"tüd, -"tyüd
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Italian attitudine, literally, aptitude, from Late Latin aptitudin-, aptitudo fitness
– more at APTITUDE
Date: 1668
1 : the arrangement of the parts of a body or figure : POSTURE
2 : a position assumed for a specific purpose <a threatening attitude>
3 : a ballet position similar to the arabesque in which the raised leg is bent at the knee
4 a : a mental position with regard to a fact or state b : a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state
5 : the position of an aircraft or spacecraft determined by the relationship between its axes and a reference datum (as the horizon or a particular star)
6 : an organismic state of readiness to respond in a characteristic way to a stimulus (as an object, concept, or situation)
(my highlighting)
This tell us a lot. We can see the connection between the organism (us), the body parts, the stimulus-response reflex (conditioning), and the feelings (emotions).
In a nutshell, this is how I see it. Most of the time I have more than one way I can choose to think about anything at all. Let me correct that: at all times I have a choice between many ways of thinking.
As I have explained before, the way I think and see will be affected first and foremost by my feelings, and these will always be pre-determined by the posture, or attitude. When I think of the word 'attitude', now, I try to think of the meat of my body, before thinking of my mental or emotional state. So, I am asking if you will redefine the word 'attitude' in this way.
We can choose our attitude, first by assuming the physical attitude that will produce the emotional and mental state that we would prefer over the one we wish to grow out of. With practice, we can become rather good at it. Remember, too (most importantly): any shift is twice as quick if we fuel it with oxygen. Always do lots of deep breathing when shifting. I find that ten deep breaths, each one held for ten seconds and exhaled slowly, works. I try to do this at least three or four times a day, whether I think I need it or not, and whether in a deliberate attitudinal shift or not.
Like the guy who bathes twice a month whether he needs it or not. My commitment: just do it.
We have the choice over our attitudes, and our attitudes will automatically choose the ways we view a subject and the thoughts that we attach to it. If we also use our cognitive, rational mind in this process, the toolkit that we have to solve problems and reframe situations in our minds, is awesome.
If we do not become adept at shifting our attitudes, we can get stuck, because we don't see that our minds are chewing on the problem the same old way. It can take ages for a breakthrough to come. If we pray, we can pray on a matter endlessly without clarification, because we constantly and repeatedly approach the subject with the old bodily stance, or attitude. This, perhaps, is what Jesus was getting at when he said it is useless to put new wine in old wineskins. The wine is our thoughts, meditations and prayers, and the wineskin, or wine bottle, is the body's storing of old conditioned responses. Whenever we have a deep-tissue massage, a sauna and spa, or do physical exercise, note just how much more readily we can shift our emotional state.
Attitude of gratitude?
Finally (!) we get to Precept 12: I'll cultivate an attitude of gratitude. I'm sure you knew I'd get to it after a rave.
I like to feel good. I will always choose feeling good over feeling bad. And I have come to learn one important truth in life: feeling good is easier than feeling bad. In my list of 1,000 feelgoods I choose to fill my body with each day (so there is no space for feelbads) is gratitude. Gratitude is a feeling in the body.
Gratitude works on a number of levels to improve my life and sense of wellbeing. Perhaps the most important is simply that it is a feelgood emotion.
Imagine gratitude now. What is something you are grateful for? Unless you're too far gone even for this manual to help, you can visualise something. Maybe it's your health, or maybe it's just the blue of the sky. Maybe you're grateful for some event in your life, like a narrow escape from an accident.
Now, the important thing, I think, is for us to know what we feel, as with all the emotions
– this is the main precept of this manual, after all.
Take some time now. Close the door for some privacy, and turn
Eminem down to about 25. When you go into gratitude, you will notice that it feels good. It's a nice feeling.
OK, what feels good? Is it the soles of your feet, or is it your left elbow? Seriously, where do the juices flow and the molecules buzz when you do gratitude? How is your breathing altered when you do gratitude? What do you feel in your chest, the muscles of your cheeks, lips, forehead, and in your neck, arms and belly? I hope you're finding that with practice you are becoming progressively better at the learnable skill of truly feeling.
So, I do gratitude because it's a feelgood. And I have a Gratitude List, and I propose that as homework. I recommend to anyone who wants to feel better, to make this list right now, and put 100 things on it that they are grateful for.
"A hundred??!!" you might exclaim.
Yes, a hundred. If you only do 50 you are robbing yourself by half of the good feelings you will be able to choose from the supermarket of feelgoods. And if you are not grateful for at least 100 things, you have your head a bit so far up your bum, you need a three-foot toothbrush, if you'll excuse my French.
Those of us in the West are so spoiled. We have computers, and roofs over our heads, and painless dentistry and a whole host of things that previous generations, and most of our fellow men and women, do not have.
What am I grateful for? I have a family; friends; a heater that warms my tootsies as I write; trees; a bed; an almanac; apples; cups of tea; clothes; shoes; feet; ten toes; some hair; cinemas; a car; buses; birds; strawberries and cream. Man, I can give you 1,000 right now, and I'm not kidding. So, please ... if you are doing this manual, please write 100 on your list, and keep it in your wallet or purse.
Gratitude does not equal gratification
Gratitude has another component, apart from the good feeling that it gives your juices. It's not a component that will sit well with some sophisticated intellectuals.
There is an element of correctness in gratitude, is there not? Doesn't lack of gratitude smell pretty bad when we have all this to be grateful for, and there are so many people suffering? How can we begin to feel good if we know that, with all our blessings, small or great, we are ungrateful, when there are millions of people who would be grateful just not to be eating grass for lunch? It is not a point I will labour, for it's a matter of conscience, and only my own conscience is my business, and my conscience is the only one that will stimulate good or bad feelings in me.
But think about the state of people in the world, and if you think your knowledge is lacking, may I suggest that you use www.google.com and try search words such as starvation, homelessness, addiction, poverty, drought, torture, refugees, famine, cancer and infant mortality. Not pretty words, but guaranteed to stimulate gratitude. If that doesn't work, I'm sure your local hospital administrators would allow you a visit to experience firsthand a gratitude-invoking tour of the wards.
Pollyanna? Hell no
Is it Pollyannish or Micawberesque to talk about an attitude of gratitude? Is it so sickly sweet that you might get diabetes by even contemplating it? Many will say it is, but you be the judge. I believe that gratitude is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to
Feel better
Think better Act better
Dramatically 
easily quickly
Far from being
Pollyannaish, it is strengthening, muscular, liberating and far more progressive than the attitudes of the misery-mongers and those who choose to live darkly. I think Western culture has lost its way a bit, away from the light, and perhaps you agree. Maybe you're fed up with sophisticated cynicism as much as I am, and see it in its historical context as a passé movement of the 1980s and '90s amongst the jaded Western intelligentsia and those they influenced.
I leave you with gratitude for your attention through this page, warm wishes for your list-making before next chapter, and a profound hope that you and I can rise more each day to the insurmountable, exciting opportunities that confront us.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
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FeelGood Manual is now
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