December 25, 2023 • 16 mins
Join me as I go through the theory and practice of gratitude, revealing its striking relevance to your ministry work. Be it as a pastor, music minister, elder, or even in your work unrelated to ministry, this episode shines light on how integrating a culture of thankfulness into your life can be transformative. We'll discuss how to appreciate the 'whats' and 'whos' in your life, even with all of the pressure to be perfect. Prepare to challenge your perspective and potentially, transform your life through the practice of gratitude. Get ready to become more grateful and make the world a better place, one 'thank' at a time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Tilded Halo.
This is a new podcast and it'sfor anybody who's a woman in
ministry.
You might be a pastor likemyself, a bishop, a priest, a
rabbi, music minister, elderchildren's minister whatever
your title is, you're absolutelyin the right place, especially
if you're someone who loves yourministry and you're doing it
(00:24):
well and you're feeling pressureto sometimes be perfect and
deep down inside, you knowyou're not, and how in the world
to deal with that?
And men, you're absolutelywelcome here too, because this
is about ministry and the samething can happen to you.
So you're all in the rightplace.
Let's get started with the show.
(00:47):
There are many little sayingsthat I've heard over the years,
and one of them is we are whatwe eat.
That's a lot of truth in thatwhen we eat junk, our bodies
feel pretty junky and, you know,can mess up a lot of things
with our metabolism and allkinds of things.
So, yeah, we are what we eat.
(01:08):
I've also heard we are what wethink and I've talked about that
in some different ways on othershows here.
One of them with the sayingfrom somebody I know and has
been a mentor for me the way wechoose to see the world creates
(01:28):
the world we see, and that'spart of we are what we think,
and that's another version ofthis.
We are type thing that I heardrecently and this comes from Dr
Robert Emmons, who is, for mostpeople, the acknowledged expert
(01:56):
guess the best word in thescience of gratitude, and he is
the first person who startedstudying gratitude
scientifically and withlegitimate scientific
experiments, like one would doin any field of psychology and
(02:18):
positive psychology, inactuality.
But Dr Emmons, who is aprofessor in psychology at
University of California Davis,says we are what we think
T-H-A-N-K.
We are what we think.
And when I first heard him saythat, it was in a presentation
(02:45):
on a YouTube video that Ichanced upon the thing and I
thought, ooh, that's interesting.
We are what we think.
And I would add, we are who wethink, not just what, but who we
think.
If we thank God's spirituniverse for a lot of the what
(03:12):
in our lives thanking for thefood we eat, the things we have,
the relationships, all kinds ofthings we become more thankful
people, we think more inthanking and we live more as a
(03:35):
thankful person and acting inthankful ways.
One of the things I've beendoing is learning more about
gratitude and focusing moreabout gratitude myself and
learning the power of gratitude,of not only feeling gratitude
(04:02):
but being grateful.
And gratitude is more than justa feeling.
It is an activity, it's a wayof living, it's something we do
as well as think or feel, and sowe are what we thank.
(04:25):
Question then becomes who orwhat do you think?
That can be a sobering questionfor any of us as we think about
that.
You know, who or what do wethink?
Do we think the people in ourimmediate family, for the little
(04:47):
things that they do, as well assome of the bigger ones?
Do we remember not to just bepolite?
Gratitudes about being polite,yes, and that's a great place to
start and start teachingchildren about saying please and
thank you, great.
But if that becomes arequirement or, as some things
(05:13):
I've read about, children arepunished if they don't say thank
you, then who wants to receivesomething if you're going to get
punished for forgetting to saythank you?
You know that's not the bestformula for learning to be a
thankful person, but if we thinkabout who are we and what are
(05:42):
the things that we receive frompeople around us, from our
families, immediate family andcommunity, and know we don't
always receive the things thatwe want to from them, and there
are people who have experiencedtrauma from family and not good
(06:04):
things.
So, you know, maybe you don'twant to thank them for that, but
there are.
Yeah, I mean, maybe we don'twant to thank them for certain
things at least, but we are whatwe thank, we are who we thank.
Who do you think, and for what?
(06:28):
Why?
What is it that is part of yourthank journey?
I recently spoke at acongregation and shared with
them about gratitude, and theygave me an honorarium, something
(06:48):
I wasn't expecting.
I thanked them during thepresentation when I was talking
with them, but then seeing,after I left, the amount of the
honorarium, I was wow.
I did not expect that.
So I sat down and wrote a thankyou note and stuck it in the
(07:14):
mail to the congregation.
Now, sitting and writing thankyou notes has never been
something I've been overly greatat doing.
Partly just the discipline ofsitting down and doing that has
never been something I'vegreatly enjoyed.
(07:35):
But this time it was a littlebit different because I was more
aware of the welcome I hadreceived from them.
I noticed that.
I noticed how they were open toreceiving me, even though I'm
(07:56):
of a different faith traditionthan they are, and that was
beautiful to see and toexperience a time of worship
with them in person, to be ableto share some things about
gratitude with them.
I was aware of the opportunityto drive to a place that I'd
(08:20):
never been before, and part ofit was a route that I had not
been on or, if I have, it was along time ago and I didn't
remember it.
And so thinking about all ofthose different things that went
into that experience helped mefeel more thankful for it.
(08:41):
And, yes, for the money thatwas there too the honorarium but
it was more than that, and so Iwas thinking of individuals and
how they had helped me prepare,and the person there who did a
(09:03):
PowerPoint presentation for partof the service and helped with
that and helped pick out music,since I didn't know what kinds
of music they might know.
So all of those differentelements that went into that
experience, and part of beingthankful is noticing those
(09:26):
things.
It's noticing the way somebodysays hello, the way we're
greeted by friends, family, by astranger, it's the way somebody
(09:47):
prepares a meal for us and thethought that might go into it,
even if it's not 100% what wewant, or maybe it didn't turn
out 100% the way we wanted.
I mean, I've been cooking formany, many years and there are
occasions when things don't turnout quite the way I wanted them
(10:07):
to.
But to still hear my husbandsay thank you means a lot to me.
Thank you, at least for theeffort and for the creativity
that may have gone into planningthings.
But to see things as biggerthan just the immediate little
(10:29):
piece, like the meal or maybesomething got a little overdone
at one time, or maybe it's notexactly what we wanted to eat
that day.
But we can still be thankful,and it's not just about thinking
(10:50):
of well, there are children inAfrica who are going hungry.
Yes, there are children inAfrica who go hungry.
And there are places in thisworld where people, through no
fault of their own, becausethey're in a place where there's
conflict, they can't get thefood they need either or to feed
(11:11):
their family.
All of that's true, but we canstill be thankful for what we
have and for the things that areright in front of us, for the
opportunities that we have, thatmaybe it's the same
(11:34):
opportunities that 99% of thepopulation has Great, but it's
something that we have and it'sstill an opportunity and we can
be thankful for that.
How many?
If you were to sit down todayand put out, put down a list of
(11:55):
things that you're grateful for,how many things would you have
on that list?
Could you come up with two orthree or 10 or 20?
How many?
I did a program a number ofyears ago with some of the
leadership of a faith community,the members who are leaders in
(12:16):
that faith community, and itstarted on a Friday evening and
then was going for half a day onSaturday and before we left on
Friday evening, I encouragedevery single person, I
(12:36):
encouraged everybody there tofind three things for that day
that they were grateful for.
So on Saturday morning I askedpeople, how did you do with that
?
And one person said that theycouldn't find three things to be
grateful for.
I was very sad to think thatsomebody had whatever happening
(13:04):
in their life that they couldn'tcome up with three things to be
grateful for.
Now, these do not have to belife changing, momentous, earth
shattering things.
They can be the fact that youcan see, the fact that you're
(13:29):
able to walk, to get into avehicle, to go someplace, that
day, that you have a vehicle toget into and the dollars are
funds to put gas in that vehicleand to maintain it, that you
(13:49):
have a place to live.
It can be basic things, can bethe people in your life.
Do we notice them?
Do we take them for granted?
And if we take them for granted, what does that say about who
we are, we are what and who wethank?
(14:11):
Who and what do you thank andwhat could you add to that list
of thanking?
How many things could you comeup with today that you're
grateful for?
That's part of what writing agratitude journal can do is to
help us think about those thingsevery day, or at least a couple
(14:34):
times a week.
But you don't have to do agratitude journal to do that.
It's good to do that everysingle day, to come up with a
minimum of three things thatyou're grateful for every single
day.
And, like I said, they don'thave to be life saving, earth
(15:00):
shattering things.
They can be everyday things,but try to make something unique
about that day.
Yeah, it could be a specificfood that you had that day.
It could be somebody you talkedto on the phone who you haven't
talked to for a long time.
(15:21):
It could be somebody you met.
I had a conversation with thatyou weren't expecting you found
out something really neat andinteresting.
Can be all kinds of differentthings.
Could be that you just hadanother day to spend with
somebody you love, just hadanother day.
(15:43):
That's a wonderful gift.
So today, who are you?
If we are what we thank and whowe thank, who are you today?
I'm going to leave you withthat question.
This is the Tilted Halo, and Ihope you'll come back and join
(16:07):
me for another day and anothertopic.
You have been listening toTilted Halo with me, kathleen
Panning.
What did you think about thisepisode?
I'd really like to hear fromyou.
Leave me some comments.
Be sure to like, subscribe andshare this episode.
Catch another upcoming episodefor more conversation on
(16:28):
ministry life, mindset and awhole lot more.
Go to wwwtiltedhalohelpcom,where I've got a resource guide
and other resources waiting foryou, and be sure to say hi to me
, kathleen Panning, on LinkedIn.
See you on the next episode.
Welcome to the Tilded Halo.
This is a new podcast and it'sfor anybody who's a woman in
ministry.
You might be a pastor likemyself, a bishop, a priest, a
rabbi, music minister, elderchildren's minister whatever
your title is, you're absolutelyin the right place, especially
if you're someone who loves yourministry and you're doing it
(00:24):
well and you're feeling pressureto sometimes be perfect and
deep down inside, you knowyou're not, and how in the world
to deal with that?
And men, you're absolutelywelcome here too, because this
is about ministry and the samething can happen to you.
So you're all in the rightplace.
Let's get started with the show.
(00:47):
There are many little sayingsthat I've heard over the years,
and one of them is we are whatwe eat.
That's a lot of truth in thatwhen we eat junk, our bodies
feel pretty junky and, you know,can mess up a lot of things
with our metabolism and allkinds of things.
So, yeah, we are what we eat.
(01:08):
I've also heard we are what wethink and I've talked about that
in some different ways on othershows here.
One of them with the sayingfrom somebody I know and has
been a mentor for me the way wechoose to see the world creates
(01:28):
the world we see, and that'spart of we are what we think,
and that's another version ofthis.
We are type thing that I heardrecently and this comes from Dr
Robert Emmons, who is, for mostpeople, the acknowledged expert
(01:56):
guess the best word in thescience of gratitude, and he is
the first person who startedstudying gratitude
scientifically and withlegitimate scientific
experiments, like one would doin any field of psychology and
(02:18):
positive psychology, inactuality.
But Dr Emmons, who is aprofessor in psychology at
University of California Davis,says we are what we think
T-H-A-N-K.
We are what we think.
And when I first heard him saythat, it was in a presentation
(02:45):
on a YouTube video that Ichanced upon the thing and I
thought, ooh, that's interesting.
We are what we think.
And I would add, we are who wethink, not just what, but who we
think.
If we thank God's spirituniverse for a lot of the what
(03:12):
in our lives thanking for thefood we eat, the things we have,
the relationships, all kinds ofthings we become more thankful
people, we think more inthanking and we live more as a
(03:35):
thankful person and acting inthankful ways.
One of the things I've beendoing is learning more about
gratitude and focusing moreabout gratitude myself and
learning the power of gratitude,of not only feeling gratitude
(04:02):
but being grateful.
And gratitude is more than justa feeling.
It is an activity, it's a wayof living, it's something we do
as well as think or feel, and sowe are what we thank.
(04:25):
Question then becomes who orwhat do you think?
That can be a sobering questionfor any of us as we think about
that.
You know, who or what do wethink?
Do we think the people in ourimmediate family, for the little
(04:47):
things that they do, as well assome of the bigger ones?
Do we remember not to just bepolite?
Gratitudes about being polite,yes, and that's a great place to
start and start teachingchildren about saying please and
thank you, great.
But if that becomes arequirement or, as some things
(05:13):
I've read about, children arepunished if they don't say thank
you, then who wants to receivesomething if you're going to get
punished for forgetting to saythank you?
You know that's not the bestformula for learning to be a
thankful person, but if we thinkabout who are we and what are
(05:42):
the things that we receive frompeople around us, from our
families, immediate family andcommunity, and know we don't
always receive the things thatwe want to from them, and there
are people who have experiencedtrauma from family and not good
(06:04):
things.
So, you know, maybe you don'twant to thank them for that, but
there are.
Yeah, I mean, maybe we don'twant to thank them for certain
things at least, but we are whatwe thank, we are who we thank.
Who do you think, and for what?
(06:28):
Why?
What is it that is part of yourthank journey?
I recently spoke at acongregation and shared with
them about gratitude, and theygave me an honorarium, something
(06:48):
I wasn't expecting.
I thanked them during thepresentation when I was talking
with them, but then seeing,after I left, the amount of the
honorarium, I was wow.
I did not expect that.
So I sat down and wrote a thankyou note and stuck it in the
(07:14):
mail to the congregation.
Now, sitting and writing thankyou notes has never been
something I've been overly greatat doing.
Partly just the discipline ofsitting down and doing that has
never been something I'vegreatly enjoyed.
(07:35):
But this time it was a littlebit different because I was more
aware of the welcome I hadreceived from them.
I noticed that.
I noticed how they were open toreceiving me, even though I'm
(07:56):
of a different faith traditionthan they are, and that was
beautiful to see and toexperience a time of worship
with them in person, to be ableto share some things about
gratitude with them.
I was aware of the opportunityto drive to a place that I'd
(08:20):
never been before, and part ofit was a route that I had not
been on or, if I have, it was along time ago and I didn't
remember it.
And so thinking about all ofthose different things that went
into that experience helped mefeel more thankful for it.
(08:41):
And, yes, for the money thatwas there too the honorarium but
it was more than that, and so Iwas thinking of individuals and
how they had helped me prepare,and the person there who did a
(09:03):
PowerPoint presentation for partof the service and helped with
that and helped pick out music,since I didn't know what kinds
of music they might know.
So all of those differentelements that went into that
experience, and part of beingthankful is noticing those
(09:26):
things.
It's noticing the way somebodysays hello, the way we're
greeted by friends, family, by astranger, it's the way somebody
(09:47):
prepares a meal for us and thethought that might go into it,
even if it's not 100% what wewant, or maybe it didn't turn
out 100% the way we wanted.
I mean, I've been cooking formany, many years and there are
occasions when things don't turnout quite the way I wanted them
(10:07):
to.
But to still hear my husbandsay thank you means a lot to me.
Thank you, at least for theeffort and for the creativity
that may have gone into planningthings.
But to see things as biggerthan just the immediate little
(10:29):
piece, like the meal or maybesomething got a little overdone
at one time, or maybe it's notexactly what we wanted to eat
that day.
But we can still be thankful,and it's not just about thinking
(10:50):
of well, there are children inAfrica who are going hungry.
Yes, there are children inAfrica who go hungry.
And there are places in thisworld where people, through no
fault of their own, becausethey're in a place where there's
conflict, they can't get thefood they need either or to feed
(11:11):
their family.
All of that's true, but we canstill be thankful for what we
have and for the things that areright in front of us, for the
opportunities that we have, thatmaybe it's the same
(11:34):
opportunities that 99% of thepopulation has Great, but it's
something that we have and it'sstill an opportunity and we can
be thankful for that.
How many?
If you were to sit down todayand put out, put down a list of
(11:55):
things that you're grateful for,how many things would you have
on that list?
Could you come up with two orthree or 10 or 20?
How many?
I did a program a number ofyears ago with some of the
leadership of a faith community,the members who are leaders in
(12:16):
that faith community, and itstarted on a Friday evening and
then was going for half a day onSaturday and before we left on
Friday evening, I encouragedevery single person, I
(12:36):
encouraged everybody there tofind three things for that day
that they were grateful for.
So on Saturday morning I askedpeople, how did you do with that
?
And one person said that theycouldn't find three things to be
grateful for.
I was very sad to think thatsomebody had whatever happening
(13:04):
in their life that they couldn'tcome up with three things to be
grateful for.
Now, these do not have to belife changing, momentous, earth
shattering things.
They can be the fact that youcan see, the fact that you're
(13:29):
able to walk, to get into avehicle, to go someplace, that
day, that you have a vehicle toget into and the dollars are
funds to put gas in that vehicleand to maintain it, that you
(13:49):
have a place to live.
It can be basic things, can bethe people in your life.
Do we notice them?
Do we take them for granted?
And if we take them for granted, what does that say about who
we are, we are what and who wethank?
(14:11):
Who and what do you thank andwhat could you add to that list
of thanking?
How many things could you comeup with today that you're
grateful for?
That's part of what writing agratitude journal can do is to
help us think about those thingsevery day, or at least a couple
(14:34):
times a week.
But you don't have to do agratitude journal to do that.
It's good to do that everysingle day, to come up with a
minimum of three things thatyou're grateful for every single
day.
And, like I said, they don'thave to be life saving, earth
(15:00):
shattering things.
They can be everyday things,but try to make something unique
about that day.
Yeah, it could be a specificfood that you had that day.
It could be somebody you talkedto on the phone who you haven't
talked to for a long time.
(15:21):
It could be somebody you met.
I had a conversation with thatyou weren't expecting you found
out something really neat andinteresting.
Can be all kinds of differentthings.
Could be that you just hadanother day to spend with
somebody you love, just hadanother day.
(15:43):
That's a wonderful gift.
So today, who are you?
If we are what we thank and whowe thank, who are you today?
I'm going to leave you withthat question.
This is the Tilted Halo, and Ihope you'll come back and join
(16:07):
me for another day and anothertopic.
You have been listening toTilted Halo with me, kathleen
Panning.
What did you think about thisepisode?
I'd really like to hear fromyou.
Leave me some comments.
Be sure to like, subscribe andshare this episode.
Catch another upcoming episodefor more conversation on
(16:28):
ministry life, mindset and awhole lot more.
Go to wwwtiltedhalohelpcom,where I've got a resource guide
and other resources waiting foryou, and be sure to say hi to me
, kathleen Panning, on LinkedIn.
See you on the next episode.
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