Staff Picks

A collection of favorite resources – both old and new – handpicked by the Gratefulness staff for your perusal. This page will be refreshed 2 – 3 times per month with “gems” which have particularly moved, touched, or engaged us…

Opening the Question of Race to the Question of Belonging
(On Being, 2015) “Race is a little bit like gravity,” john powell says: experienced by all, understood by the few. He is an esteemed legal scholar and thinker who counsels all kinds of people and projects on the front lines of our present racial anguish and longings. Race is relational, he reminds us. It’s as much about whiteness as about color. And it largely plays out, as we’re learning through new science, in our unconscious minds.

Human Postcards #14 – Iñaki
(Human Postcards, June 2015) Iñaki is an 8-year old boy from New Zealand. Here is his one minute response to the question “What’s the most beautiful thing that happened in your life?”

Thoughts
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods…

Two Faiths One Prayer — Muslims and Jews Pray Together
(2015) Muslims and Jews prayed together side-by-side in public spaces across Los Angeles, in an effort to show that peace is possible. “We were just so surprised that we could do this together and it’s very similar,” said participant Maryam Saleemi. “It was kind of like an ‘Aha Moment’ that we’re praying to the same God, why aren’t we doing this all the time together?”

The Buddhist and the Neuroscientist
(The Atlantic, July 2015) In 1992, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. By that point, he’d spent his career asking why people respond to, in his words, “life’s slings and arrows” in different ways. Why are some people more resilient than others in the face of tragedy? And is resilience something you can gain through practice?

Agitated Pakistanis, give gratitude a chance
(Dawn, July 2015) “With bad news filling our television screens and social media feeds to the brim, eventually spilling into our lives, it’s hard for the average Pakistani to have a positive outlook…A big part of improving mental health has to do with making small positive changes in one’s life and as I discovered during one experiment, sometimes a dose of gratefulness is all you need to ward away the blues.”

Books Related to Creative Expression
We have the grand honor of being conduits for divine imagination. Thus not only do we embrace all that’s freely given to us – the very definition of gratefulness – we also magnanimously participate in developing and fulfilling this gift. To that end we offer this list of books to help us connect with and cultivate our creative gifts.

We hope you enjoyed these resources. To discover more, visit our complete Library of Resources or dip into Gratefulness in Daily Life.