Every Day We Forget, Learn And Are Grateful

Each day represents an enrichment, a new life lesson that allows us to grow and improve as people.

Sometimes forgetting is a subtle art that allows us to learn and give value to the things that really matter, where being grateful intensely covers every lived act, every emotion experienced. Because the beauty of our existence lies precisely in the simplest, purest acts.

Knowing how to be grateful, being able to learn and allow ourselves to forget certain things is not only the basis of many philosophies and religions, it  is the key to mental well-being . Techniques such as “emotional freedom”, for example, underline the need to feel free, not to cling to negative emotions in order to be grateful for who we are and to continue learning and experimenting.

We are constantly subject to this mental noise that prevents us from prioritizing what is important. Anxiety, stress or the habit of postponing happiness to “when I have, when I will be, when I will get” prevent us from seeing what should make up the score of our daily melody.

We invite you to reflect on gratitude, forgetfulness and the ability to learn.

Forgiveness is good for the brain

Forgiveness is an act of courage that we cannot always carry out. We usually interpret forgiveness as an act of weakness, when in reality it is a form of emotional release  with which we stop being a prisoner of what has done us harm. It is a way to break the bond of pain, to close certain phases.

• Robert Alder is a pioneer of the so-called “psychoneuroimmunology” and explains that there is a very close relationship between emotions and health, to the point that accumulating resentment, anger or frustration directly affects our immune system, making us more vulnerable to disease.

• Negative emotions primarily affect our autonomic nervous system, which controls unwanted body functions.

• Resentment, like stress, raises the levels of adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol in the blood, blocking the function of the body’s defense cells.

Forgiveness is the greatest gesture we can make for our health and our emotional balance ; it means cutting bitterness to open the doors to new opportunities.

The ability to learn every day to better adapt

Learning does not mean accumulating information or memorizing dates. Learning is the act of progressing as a person, reinventing oneself every day to better adapt to the context.

• Learning is discovering something new every day to improve as a person, to recognize mistakes and overcome them and to accept the views of others, which can be as valid as ours.
• We cannot even avoid considering the need to accumulate “cognitive reserve”. According to two studies conducted at the University of Rioja, the greater the brain activity developed during our life, the better we deal with old age and any possible form of dementia.

It is necessary to understand that our existence is a continuous learning, which we must take on with hope and mental and emotional openness.

The virtue of being grateful

In 2003 Emmons and McCullough conducted an interesting study in which a group of people were asked to write down for a few months everything they should have been grateful for during their days. Another group was instead asked to report what negative they would experience in everyday life.

• The results were very significant: people who are able to appreciate and be grateful for everything around them have a fuller and more satisfying life.

• It is not just about being able to be grateful for what others do for us. The art of knowing how to be grateful also implies the virtue of seeing the positive aspects of oneself.

• Gratitude also brings its benefits to our brain: the feeling of stress and anxiety is reduced, we enjoy a better quality of sleep and also decreases the risk of falling into depression.

Being grateful means giving value to what we have and what we are, it is starting a virtuous circle in which we leave aside negative emotions and allow ourselves to be more receptive to the simplicity of our environment and our personal relationships.

We almost always think about what we lack, what we have and what we have lost, when in reality we should be grateful for what we have and carry on without resentment, allowing ourselves to learn every day with hope together with those around us.