Walking Prayer: Gratitude

Many of us are trying to get outside each day and take a walk.  This week’s prayer challenge is to simply look for one beautiful thing each day as you walk or as you go about your life.  Make this a daily practice.  God has created our brains to honor this practice of gratitude. Neuroscience tells us that when we consistently practice gratitude, our brains start to scan our environment for things to be grateful for.  It’s like a computer program constantly running in the background.
Another reason we need to make Gratitude an active, intentional and CONSISTENT practice is because our brains are evolutionarily wired for Negativity Bias. (When your day is filled with great things but the only thing you focus on is the one negative!  That's negativity bias.)  But at the intersection of Science and Spirit is our brain's own plasticity and we can rewire this negativity bias by feeding the flowers instead of the weeds. So take this challenge a step further and either write down your “one beautiful thing” or share it with a friend or family member each day. You could even try this as a daily text chain with your group of friends! This practice helps to shift our thinking from a place of scarcity (what we don’t have) to abundance (what we do have).