Have you heard the saying ‘always look for the helpers’? It’s a quote from American children’s television host, Fred Rogers, host of Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood.  He credits it to his mother as her way of reminding him to shift his focus to something good in difficult times.    

Recently someone in one of my mindfulness classes mentioned it.  We were discussing the concept of gratitude, or as my group like to call it, thankfulness.  While Mr Rogers was talking about people as helpers, in our class we knew that helpers can be so much more, and we went on to discuss a few of them.    

To put it into a bit of context - I’ve replaced the terms positive and negative with helpful and unhelpful.  Everything is subjective and circumstance dependent and what is helpful in one situation might be unhelpful in another.

So... back to Mr Rogers, what if the helper we look for is something helpful, something we could be grateful, or thankful for?   

Gratitude is proven to be a helpful emotion.  It boosts feelings of optimism, joy, pleasure, and enthusiasm.  It not only shifts our attention to but also amplifies the good, and there’s a huge body of research that shows that regular gratitude practices can literally rewire the neural pathways in the brain for greater happiness.

I’m not suggesting we ignore the difficult situations.  Some of them are going to need our attention, but we can take a moment to take a long, slow deep breath and be grateful for the breath, roll our shoulders or stretch and be grateful for the movement, and change our focus and look for something to be grateful for, a blue sky, the friend we are with, that cup of coffee we had this morning, I could list a hundred things. When times are tough, and when they’re not, it’s helpful to take a moment to find your personal helpers, the helpful things that you can feel gratitude, or thankfulness for and yes, as Mr Rogers suggests, they might be people.  Gratitude won’t make the difficult things go away, but it will help you get through them in a more helpful and optimistic way and help you build the resilience that will serve you well in the future. 

As so many people do, I keep a gratitude journal, or what I call my ‘book of thankfuls’.  Making daily entries not only helps me review my day from the helpful perspective, it also makes great reading on those days when nothing seems to be going right and I need a reminder to look for the helpers.   

We all know that practice creates habits and gratitude is an excellent habit to have.  Take a moment to step back, to take a deep breath, to explore your world and your thoughts with curiosity and ask yourself ‘am I looking for the helpers?’ 

Bron Roberts is the CHO of Let’s Laugh, a social enterprise providing simple, effective, evidence based programs that support the wellbeing or individuals, organisations and communities. bronwyn@letslaugh.com.au.