Caught in a recent downpour, Nina Lesowitz was on the verge
of whining. Her clothes were wet. The streets were slick. But then she
thought: Hey, at least I’m headed home.
Like most of us, Lesowitz grew up complaining. “I was fixated on
problems. I never knew what ‘be here now’ meant because my mind was
always racing into the future. I always felt like I needed to move
somewhere or do something in order to feel fulfilled — like I had
to go to Italy and rebuild an old farmhouse.” Wrenched by that sense of
incompleteness, of what-if and only-when, she had “stress contests”
with friends, each trying to outdo the rest in lamenting about spouses,
children, work.
It was a kind of addiction, and the cure was astoundingly simple.
Lesowitz calls it “saying ‘thank you’ all day.” Forcibly shifting her
gaze to the bright side, she began reminding herself constantly to be
grateful, for instance, for her hands and feet and the fact that her
kids had shiny hair rather than criticizing them for not brushing
it.
“All our lives, we’ve been told to do this,” she laughs. “But it’s
so easy to forget.”
Researchers such as UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons have
found that those who consciously practice gratitude sleep better and
enjoy better health and higher self-esteem than those who don’t.
“We’re constantly thinking: If good things happen to us, we’ll be
happy. But the reverse is true: When we’re happy, good things happen,”
asserts the Oakland author, who will discuss her new book Living
Life as a Thank You: The Transformative Power of Daily Gratitude at
Books Inc. (1344 Park St., Alameda) on Thursday, October 29.
Coauthored with Mary Beth Sammons, it’s a handbook packed with
exercises and real-life examples, such as that of the clergyman who
endured starvation, tuberculosis, and dysentery as a prisoner of war
and now preaches positive thinking from the pulpit.
Also appearing in the book is a Piedmont stay-at-home mom who signed
up to participate in the 2001 NBC reality show Lost, which
stranded two-person teams in remote outposts around the world, with a
$200,000 prize for the first pair to reach the Statue of Liberty.
“She went onto the show because she wasn’t very happy,” Lesowitz
explains. “So she was dropped off in the middle of the Mongolian
desert, blindfolded, with a partner she didn’t know and $100 with which
to get back to New York. They had to beg their way across Mongolia,
then Russia. On the way, she met people who had nothing, yet
they would share their meals with her. At one point, she broke down
sobbing” because she realized how much she had back home, how full her
life had been and still was.
“She had this tremendous epiphany about what was really important,”
Lesowitz says. “She thought: I don’t need the prize money. I don’t need
a new car.” And she lived in the East Bay.
“We live in a fabulous place. It’s so easy to appreciate living
here,” Lesowitz says. “Yet you meet so many people who don’t.” 7 p.m.,
free. BooksInc.com
