 It's very easy on a gloomy day like today to feel a sense of lack that when is the sun going to come out again? How long until spring is here or when it was sunny last year for a long time? We had the drought once it gonna rain again The first time I grew veggie in my 20s I grew lots of rows of different things and everything came up except for the carrots But what was I focused on the carrots because there is that sense of lack and that comes from The importance of making sure that the larder is full and we have enough wood for the fire and that kind of thing And so it's important for us to focus on those things and yet the downside of that is it's very easy for us to do that all the time and Not notice the things that we do have Now nature system is exquisitely beautiful because when we meet our needs when we do things that are important for survival We get a brain hit we get a buzz of dopamine Maybe some serotonin that makes us feel good, and it's a beautifully exquisite system. The problem is when we Feel lack day-to-day, and we're focusing on that and we miss that dopamine here We go looking for elsewhere and in our modern world that means gambling Creation or drugs maybe overeating or buying stuff. We don't need and of course Some of those things are not good for us and one of them is definitely not good for the planet And so how do we deal with that? Well, it just comes back to how our ancestors got their rewards was from Living community a community that's supportive and bizarrely interestingly Gratitude is one of those things receiving gratitude and giving gratitude also provides us with dopamine, but it comes with Serotonin so when we do those other things that we do these days It tends to be we just get dopamine without the serotonin and researchers discovered that tends to lead to unhealthy behaviors addicted addictive behaviors When you think about it the world is reminding us all the time to be grateful every time we meet somebody who hasn't got something We have it's a reminder how lucky we are to have it whether we're learning about People fleeing their homeland and becoming refugees or somebody who's got toothache Or maybe somebody who's just living on the streets all of those are opportunities for us to truly appreciate what we have and really it's just a case of Making it a habit to remind ourselves and interestingly Researchers have discovered that when we do make gratitude a habit then we become much happier as a result So how can we do that? Well keeping a diary perhaps or leaving little reminders around the place One thing is that we have a few of around the house or these little symbols that come from a book From many years ago called go gratitudes little symbol with the idea again that it's just a reminder We've put a sticky magnet on the back so they can go anywhere around the house and This one is on the strawberries that we harvested last summer and we've stored for the winter and It's lots to be grateful for here because we've got the variety of strawberries somebody some people have grown that strawberry and bred it to be as big and delicious as it is and the people that invented jars and Made it possible and the dehydrator so we could dry them and store them for the winter all of these things the people that helped to pick them all of these are opportunities to feel gratitude and so What I'm doing is Reminding us to you know start doing that because when we buy less stuff We actually end up creating a world which has less stuff in it, but a lot more happier people so Find something to be grateful for this morning somebody you know or something you have and Over the next few weeks. I'll be creating a set of videos about things that I Think we should be grateful for but perhaps we don't always give a lot of attention to you