37: Appreciation (Building Bounce: Ch 5) | S4E37

(00:00) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 37. Hello, Father.

(00:05) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. You know, some “off the air” things can’t be shared.

(00:10) Stephanie Warner: You know, I had to make us go on air so that we could focus because we were laughing too much. We may be a little tired. It’s okay. We’re happy to be together.

(00:20) Marcus Warner: Tad punchy, tad punchy.

(00:23) Stephanie Warner: And we are appreciating being together, which is the topic of the day. So this is a good thing.

(00:29) Marcus Warner: That was a good segue.

(00:30) Stephanie Warner: We are continuing with our book study going chapter by chapter through Building Bounce, written by Marcus Warner and Stefanie Hinman. Which I will just again reiterate because I haven’t for a while. I am not Stefanie Hinman, I am Stephanie Warner. Stefanie Hinman is very epic. The goal of the series is to help you grow your emotional resilience so you can thrive on your deeper walk with God. For the series, we want to direct you to the DIY Book Club Kit.

For this book, it’s a free download that you can find linked in the description. And you can use it for personal reflection or book buddy reading or small group guides. We want it to be of service to you as you are reading this book. And we are now in Chapter 5, which is all about appreciation. So, Father, appreciation. Give us the big picture overview of left brain, right brain, and all the things.

(01:33) Marcus Warner: I grew up like a lot of people hearing the gratitude attitude sermons my whole life. Christians should have a gratitude attitude. Paul routinely spoke about bringing your prayers and supplications with thanksgiving, and do this with gratitude and do this. And so for me that tended to mean, have a list. So I would be like, all right, I need to be thankful. Or you learned a prayer model like acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving supplication. I’d get to thanksgiving and I’m like, okay, it was always the same.

Thank you for Mom and Dad. Thank you for my brothers and sisters. Thank you for my friends. There was no emotion in it at all. It was like, thank you, thank you. It’s like, here’s my duty. I need to do this. Which kind of gets into the difference between right brain and left brain oriented gratitude. Left brain is just doing a task. I am focused on the task. I’m getting the task done. I was taught to say, thank you. I have said, thank you. Task is complete. But there was no appreciation experienced. I didn’t actually enter into a state of gratitude, which requires more of the right brain relational connection for there to be that kind of appreciation. It’s like, you gave me this beautiful fountain pen, right? And so every time I write with this fountain pen I just pick it up and go, thanks Steph.

(03:17) Stephanie Warner: It’s nice that you even remember every time you pick it up, so that’s nice.

(03:21) Marcus Warner: Well, yeah, every now and then I’ll take the time to stop and really appreciate the pen. The weight of the pen, the quality of the metal, the color that you like so much and all these things. Appreciation is kind of taking time with something and giving it enough space to affect your body. That’s ultimately what we’re after here. So we talked earlier about quieting, that it is taking control of your body back from upsetting emotions. What we’re trying to do with appreciation is we’re actually trying to bring positive joy energy into our bodies. And so that takes more than just thank you for my mom and dad. Thank you for my wife. Thank you for this.

You have to do more than just make statements. You need to find ways to enter into experiences that end up affecting your body and making your body feel the appreciation. Because like saying, thank you takes us one second. Thank you. Boom. Thank you for the coffee. That’s two seconds maybe? That one thing happens in seconds, the other thing happens in minutes. And so you need a little bit of space and a little bit of time and focus to be able to let your body feel it. A little trick I found is actually to start with a physical memory, it can sometimes be helpful to jumpstart that process. So for me, being a former athlete, a lot of those physical memories are from sports.

And I can remember hitting a baseball really hard. I can remember hitting a tennis ball really pure. I can remember things like that. Whereas other people who didn’t play sports, they might have other physical memories. I remember getting into the water. I remember hiking. I remember what it felt like as a musician to be in the flow and just feel the music flowing through you instead of actually just trying to crank it out. So things like that, that’s what we’re looking for.

(05:43) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, one of my really simple ones…One of my absolute favorite things ever is the air right before a storm. When it’s cool and brisk and kind of heavy, but not in a bad way.

(06:00) Marcus Warner: It’s not spinning.

(06:02) Stephanie Warner:  Well, almost. Yeah, but I did want to circle back and just say that the right brain appreciation is really important, and we’re gonna keep going into that. I do not wanna belittle left brain appreciation. I don’t wanna belittle gratitude because it still has its place and it’s still important. And for some people, that’s their baby step in some circumstances where they’re not even thinking in a gratitude way. They haven’t even gotten to the point yet where that’s a continual thing. I think it also kind of goes into, if you need to rewire or train your brain away from fear mapping into joy mapping or things like that.

One of the ways you do that is by training yourself to look for the things that are happy. To make your list of things that you’re grateful for. And it doesn’t always have to be a full body experience. It’s still a good practice to track things that you’re grateful for. But we want to move beyond that. We don’t want it to just stay there. Would that be accurate to say?

(07:02) Marcus Warner:  Yes, that’s very true and it’s very accurate. I think I’m just trying to cast a little bit bigger vision for people who have never thought beyond that. But if you haven’t even done that then that is a great starting point. Let’s get there. Where this lesson first became real for me was before I learned all the brain science stuff honestly. I was a pastor. I was kind of depressed. I was going to preach that night again. And it’s hard when you’re a pastor and you’re feeling discouraged between services and you have to go back out and kind of tell people how to live the victorious Christian life.

I opened Psalm 107, verse one, it says, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever.” And the Hebrew there is his “hesed” endures forever. So people who are kind of in the Jim Wilder circles, hesed will never be the same again, right? But I hadn’t heard of that back then. I knew what tov and hesed were. I  knew the Hebrew words. And I remember that it says, “give thanks to the Lord for he is good, his love endures forever.” And I’m like, okay, get out of this funk that I’m in, I should be grateful. And I literally just started making a list and I got through about 15 items on my list and I wasn’t feeling any gratitude. I wasn’t really affecting anything. And I felt this nudge from the Holy Spirit that said, read the verse again.

And then I was like, it’s telling me what to be thankful for already in the verse. It was like give thanks for God’s goodness and for his hesed love, that sticky love that bonds to us. So I wrote those words on the page, your goodness, your love. And while I was thinking about that, all of a sudden it was like, oh, God’s plans for me always filter through those two lenses. He is always looking at me through eyes of goodness and love.

And that means when I bring all my problems to Him, it is a God who is good and who loves me who is coming up with the plan for those problems. And that I don’t even actually have to know what those plans are. I just have to know that the person coming up with the plan is good and that he loves me. And I’m now meditating on this. I’m beginning to really appreciate the fact that God is good and that he loves me. And within five minutes, my attitude was starting to change. I was moving out of that space that I was in. So that’s kind of the difference. For me, that was really the concrete moment where I realized the difference between just making a list and entering into something you could meditate on and really enter into.

(10:02) Stephanie Warner: Well, and that was a relational experience too, because God was nudging you and you were dwelling on that. Yeah, that’s a good story. Well, I’m very excited for this next little segment here. One of our favorite acrostics that you ever made and honestly, I think you made it rather quickly. We love it. It’s one of my favorites. These are practices for growing joy, and they aptly spell out G.A.M.E.S. So would you give us the overview here?

(10:43) Marcus Warner:  So, the background on that in terms of the “quick”, was that we were trying to come up with a Thanksgiving devotional for A Deeper Walk. And I was at the time working on this area of how do you train people to practice appreciation? And it started with the past, present, and future. What is there in my past? What is there in my present? What is there in my future? I’m like, well, the past is memories. The present is gratitude. And then there’s anticipation in the future.

And I’m like, well, if you rearrange that to G.A.M., then you’re halfway to GAMES. Then I thought, well, singing is a thing. And then ‘E’ came pretty quickly because it was experiences. You can create experiences and choose to engage in experiences that put you in a place to experience appreciation. And so it came really fast and it came all together right like that. That’s where it came from and how it developed.

(11:45) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, and I remember after that Thanksgiving webinar you did, immediately people started using it like around the Thanksgiving table. Some people maybe went around and did all of the letters. And so it’s become a really good group activity. We’ll do that when we’re leading seminars, having everybody get in their tables and go through this. It’s really good for that. And you can also practice it individually. So it’s just really useful and fun.

(12:22) Marcus Warner: I created it because I had a deadline on something and I needed to get it out there. And then people started writing back that I use this with my kids. Now we do this on the drive to school, and I do this and that. I started hearing about all these different people using it in different circumstances. I was like, wow, God, that was not expected, but great. Maybe we should hold onto this one. So that’s where it came from. And it is helpful to have concrete things you can remember when you’re trying to especially build new skills into your life.

(12:55) Stephanie Warner: So let’s unpack it.

(12:56) Marcus Warner: All right, past, present, future. We just rearranged it a little bit to spell the word. So we start with the present and that’s gratitude. What’s going on in your life right now? And we’ll actually include like the last 24 hours in that. So it’s not strictly speaking at this minute as I look around what is happening, but it’s in my life right now. What is there to be thankful for? And for me, the easiest place to start is usually nature. I will look out at nature and very quickly find something to appreciate about nature. And it could be the depth of the design and the intricacy of something, it could be the majesticness of something. It could be the beauty, but you begin to enter into it. That’s usually where I start with the, what is in the present right now?

Sometimes it’s also stuff people have done. And you look around the room and you’re like, I really admire these bookshelves behind me. I’ve got bookshelves in front of me. And some, like the ones behind me are pretty basic, but the ones in front of me have a pretty intricate design in them. Sometimes you just enjoy things like that. And somebody gave me a book called, Theo of Golden, I think it is? In this book he is a person who takes his time and enjoys things. And I think it’s one of the reasons why people like the book so much, because he’s really good at staying present and taking his time to enjoy what there is to enjoy in the present. And that is a skill that goes a long way to helping people build resilience.

(14:36) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I remember when you first started really intentionally practicing it. You would be like, I’m holding my cup of coffee and I’m feeling the ceramic and I’m smelling the aroma. It’s a way that you can linger in that and feel each of the things.

(15:03) Marcus Warner: Yeah, it’s why mugs matter, right? There are some mugs that just make you happier than other mugs. One of my favorites was a psychologist friend of mine who had a mug that said, “Freudian sips on it.” And I was like, I want that mug. But anyway, yeah.

(15:11) Stephanie Warner:  Awesome. All right. So that’s, find something in your present that you’re grateful for and spend time appreciating it. And then we move to anticipation, which is obviously a forward move in the future.

(15:21) Marcus Warner: Yep. Anticipation. That’s the future. I want to have something I’m looking forward to in the next 24 hours, something I’m looking forward to in the next week. Then something I’m looking forward to beyond that. And here’s the lesson I had to learn with all of these things. I am not looking for something that is so amazing that it offsets all of the problems in my life. That’s a mistake. When I first started I was like, this is stupid. This isn’t changing anything. This isn’t going to make a difference. This isn’t going to fix any of my problems, but what helped me was to think of it as I’m just stopping to smell the roses.

I’m still on my way to a battle. I’m still on my way to something difficult, but there’s still these beautiful roses here that are worth appreciating. And no, it doesn’t change anything, but it helps to build something inside of me. And so with the anticipation, it’s the same thing. It’s like, what am I looking forward to? Like for me, I’ve been watching this one TV series and it’s  getting ready for the final episode.

I’m really anticipating that. It’s just going to be cool. I can’t wait to watch the last episode. And so it can be that simple. I’ve got something to look forward to. For me, it’s a little bit bigger cause I’m literally leaving for Europe tomorrow. So there’s plenty of things to anticipate coming up in my world right now. And the thing you tend to have to guard against in anticipation is anxiety.

What can start off as anticipation like, I’m really looking forward to this, your brain can turn into an anxiety exercise because you’re like, but what if this happens? And what if that happens? And what if this takes place? And what if that takes place? And so you really have to guard against that. Just thinking about the future isn’t going to get this done. It’s living in that feeling of anticipation and excitement and giving yourself permission to camp out there that we’re talking about.

(17:25) Stephanie Warner: Well, and as you often say, sometimes the thing you’re anticipating ends up being a flop or it’s not that great. But don’t rob yourself of the joy of the anticipation of it. You can still enjoy that, and that’s still good and true. And then if it’s not a flop, it’s just a cherry on top. But I was also going to say, when you are experiencing pain, your world is small. And so having things, especially to anticipate that are in the future, can be an anchor point so you’re thinking about something that’s not happening in this small painful moment, is really helpful. And so if you can find those things, again, even if it’s a little thing like the TV show or I just really love sunsets. I’ve got to get to this thing, I got to get to that thing or whatever, that can help you kind of broaden out.

(18:19) Marcus Warner: There are some negative things to avoid here and that’s one of them. What we always tell people is the one forbidden word in any appreciation exercise is “but.”  So if you’re anticipating something with joy, if you’re thinking about what’s going on with joy, as soon as you say, but, the appreciation is over. So we want to avoid that word and stay focused on the parts of the appreciation that come before.

(18:50) Stephanie Warner: All right, let’s move on to the past, to memories. So how do we appreciate memories?

(18:57) Marcus Warner: So I have been told there are studies that have been done that say that if you go back and relive a memory in your mind, your body will literally recreate the same chemical reaction that you had when you first experienced it. That it’s possible to go back and feel the same joy and feel the same thing. Now for me, I was skeptical of that because I frequently get nostalgic about things from the past, but to actually feel the joy of it all over again? The first time I actually saw somebody do that and I was aware of what was happening was your mom. And she’s very good at that.

And every now and then you’ll find her just almost bouncing with joy and she’s thinking about a memory. She’s reliving something from her past that was really enjoyable and it usually had to do with her grandparents’ farm or something like that. So whether we get all the way to complete recreation of the experience or not, there is something. When we experience appreciation, appreciation is the fastest pathway to joy. And so appreciation is also the fastest way to trigger the chemical releases in our bodies that allow us to feel joy. And so they have a great calming effect on our neuro system.

When we’re overwhelmed by something else, if we can find a way to move into a place of appreciation and stay there for a few minutes, that’s going to have a very calming effect on my nervous system. It’s going to say, “thank you”, to me, for finding a way to get there. When it comes to memories though, I have to tell people that the memories can be a minefield because sometimes things that start as happy memories don’t end as happy memories. So you always have to be a little bit of a film producer and like, hey, we’re going to clip this part out. We’re going to edit this part out. We’re going to stay focused on this. And again, I’m avoiding the word, “but”.

I remember this, I felt so happy and I will just camp out there and I don’t go to the, then this happened part, and camp out there. That’s what happens with a lot of us, we’ll start off with this was such a happy thing, but then this happened. And then what we do is we spend five to fifteen minutes thinking about what happened next that was negative instead of really camping out on the positive part of the memory. I’ve had it suggested this way. I remember Ed Khouri back in the day who was teaching at a Life Model event said it’s a good idea to have a top 10 list of memories that make you smile. And he would suggest that you write out the memory on a half a page to one page of paper and then you give it a title so that you can pull it up by title.

And so I’ve got one, it’s my grand slam memory. It was at a pastor, student softball game and  in the back of my mind I was thinking this might be the last time I ever play. I got up at the bottom of the last inning and hit a grand slam to win the game. It just stuck with me. I can go back and I can revisit that memory. It’s got a physical element to it. It’s an easy one to connect to. And I can stay in that memory for a couple of minutes and just kind of relive the whole experience of watching the ball come in, feeling the contact, and watching it go out. Hearing people cheer and also having the feeling like this is a great way to go out if you’re going to end your baseball career.

So yeah, all of those things. So like that’s one of them. So do you have any memories like that at all? Collect them and bring them together. I think of another one. I had a 10th birthday party and my mom brought out a cornucopia, literally. I know most people probably don’t even know what that is anymore.She brought out a cornucopia with cheeseburgers flowing out of it. And I was like, this is the best thing ever. And I can go back there in my mind and revisit that moment. So that’s what we’re talking about. What are some happy, happy memories that are easy to go back to and revisit again and again? And most of us have more than 10, but it’s good.

(23:38) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, and you can have ten in different categories. These are my ten top birthday memories. These are my ten top winter memories. These are my ten top sports.

(23:51) Marcus Warner: Vacation memories, sports memories. We just have to avoid the “but” when we do that sort of thing. I can go back to like high school basketball and there’s highs and lows there. I’m like, yeah, I remember this. It was so great. And if I’m not careful, I’m going to go to the but, yeah, this thing. And then I can end up camping out there and it’s not an appreciation exercise. Most of us have mixed things throughout our lives. So that’s what we’re doing though, we’re trying to figure out how to camp out on the things that were really joyful.

(24:33) Stephanie Warner: This has been a good exercise. Can we move on to experiences?

(24:38) Marcus Warner: I’m having so much fun on the memories one.

(24:39) Stephanie Warner: I know, I know.

(24:40) Marcus Warner: I also just wanted everybody to know I hit a grand slam. That was really part of it.

(24:45) Stephanie Warner: And a cornucopia of cheeseburgers. Well, and also notice how much fun it is to share these things. It’s one thing to dwell on it on your own, but when you get to share you have that amplified joy and your storytelling. It’s a really good thing. But yes, for the sake of time, we should move on.

(25:04) Marcus Warner: So then we get to experiences. Experiences sometimes come out of memories. I remember how good it felt to do “X.” Why don’t I do “X” again? So a classic example, Ben is always trying to get me to do water coloring because I had such happy memories of doing watercolor stuff back in the day and I just stopped doing it. And he’s like, well, let’s go take a class together and let’s go do this. And he’s right, that would be good. And I’m sure that if I pulled out the watercolors again and could get out and do that it would be an experience that would be joyful, especially if I was doing it with him. And had a class, that sort of thing. There are experiences you can kind of create that you can plan. And sometimes just planning those gives you something to anticipate, something that’s going to create a memory.

(26:08) Stephanie Warner: But the doing of a thing can be appreciating, like, oh, I love hosting. I want to host a game night. Or I love music. I’ve always wanted to learn the guitar. I’m going to do lessons, and I’m going to enjoy that. What’s a skill that I’ve been wanting to cultivate? This year I’m going to do a hike every month. Which hike am I going to do? I’m going to plan that out, and I’m going to enjoy that experience.

(26:35) Marcus Warner: And I know people like who are going to visit every baseball stadium in America. That’s an experience they want to have. Or go to their top 10 national parks that they love or something. It could be as simple as I’m going for a walk in the evening and enjoy the sunset. That’s an experience. I’m going to get up early and watch the sunrise. So those are experiences that I’m just planning. So that’s the ‘E’. That’s kind of what we’re talking about there. It’s whatever works for you to help bring joy.

And then the ‘S’ is singing. I think this caught me off guard when I realized that there were certain songs that made me really happy, and I did not realize how happy they made me. And so I started kind of collecting certain songs like that. Some of them are from junior high, some are from high school, some are from later in life. And one of them literally was the viral song, “Happy.” Which some people just roll their eyes, but that song makes me smile every time I hear it. Collecting songs and I put them in my playlist or something like that. I literally have Korean songs that make me happy as a playlist on my phone because there’s got to be a little variety to this

(28:06) Stephanie Warner: Music itself makes you happy, but then even just the singing brings your brain together. You and mom are so musical and you can harmonize with each other and know the parts. You grew up in churches that sang all the different parts and hymns and things.

(28:26) Marcus Warner: I know I still love hymnals and the ability to read the notes and sing bass or tenor on a few songs, but mostly bass. I grew up that way. It was a priority in our family to learn that skill. It’s still something that brings me joy to be able to harmonize and sing and being in a group that sings. Several years ago, I remember I joined the choir just for the Christmas season. Now most churches don’t have choirs anymore, but I was at a church that had a choir and it was so fun just to go back and read. Now I don’t necessarily want to do it every single year, but it was really nice to re-experience that feeling of it being October or early November and you’re starting to sing Christmas carols. And cantata kind of things and get that in your mind. So singing, it’s different for everybody. There’s people who would not touch choir music with a 10 foot pole, but for someone of my age it’s pretty good.

(29:38) Stephanie Warner: Well, I’ve talked before about enjoying singing. And sometimes I’ll even sing prayers because it’s bringing my brain together in a different way. And so singing is good. All right, we’re just fully owning the fact that these episodes for the series have been longer. So you are practicing what you preach in a good way and lingering in each of these points in a life-giving way. And I think it’s great. So the next part of this chapter is all about appreciating God. And I do think that a lot of the things that we’ve already talked about are applicable to this category. But would you talk a little bit more about that?

(30:23) Marcus Warner: I did have somebody one time tell me they thought the only kind of appreciation that counted was appreciation toward God. Because they were like, this feels really secular. Where’s God in all of this? And I’m like, well, he’s in all of it. Because it says it  every good and every perfect gift comes from above from the Father of light. So it’s like, you know, I’m thanking God. All of this is a way of giving thanks to God, but to their point. There are some specifics and I’ll give you an example of a list of things. Dwelling on the names of God, and one of my favorite places to go is Psalm 91.

There’s like four Hebrew names for God in the first two verses. Those who dwell in the shadow of El Yon. El Yon was the high god of the pantheon over all other gods. And then it says, will dwell in the shelter or the protection, the cloud protection of Shaddai. And Shaddai is most likely referring to mountain. Like it’s the mountain that gives shade. It’s a protective image. And then it’s like, how do we enter into this shelter? I say to Yahweh, I trust you.

And I say to Yahweh, you are my refuge. You are my fortress. You are my Elohim. And so I can meditate on the meanings of these things and going back into the Hebrew and Greek and all the rest of it helps. I enjoy that. Meditating on the meaning of the names of God is a way of spending time there. Meditating on the attributes of God is another one. His omniscience, his omnipresence, his goodness and his hesed and things like that. These are his attributes. Provision.

One of my favorite little devotional books I read was called, Jehovah Jireh. And it was written by a friend of mine who was a pastor out in California. It was basically kind of a mini autobiography. But every story was a story of how Jehovah Jireh had shown up and provided in his life. It was also a way of saying, here are 10 gratitude or appreciation stories from my past of God’s provision. And I think that’s just so important, because he says over and over again, don’t forget, don’t forget, remember, remember what God has done for you. Provisions, promises, what are the promises of God? My mom, especially, always had a promise of God that she was actively memorizing and meditating on any given time. And with every trial that she went through in life she asked God for a new promise for that trial.

And this is a woman who had a lot of death and a lot of hardship in her journey. That was another one, focusing on the promises of God, focusing on the abundance. Whether it’s about nature and the lavishness of it and the abundance of God, and his delight in being lavish. Or the spiritual blessings. Ephesians 1 says that we have been given every spiritual blessing in Christ so you start unpacking those and it’s like I’m in Christ. I’m elect in Christ. I’m adopted in Christ. I’m holy in Christ. I’m beloved. You go through all these spiritual blessings that are mine and meditating on all of these things, this is a way of practicing appreciation that is directly related to God

(34:10) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. You could go on. That’s a good list, and you unpack it in the book as well. And then some practices that you also talk about were gratitude journals or writing letters to God or creating art. Some of this is probably also Stefanie Hinman giving some examples here in this section. It sounds like Stefanie.

(34:32) Marcus Warner: She’s a little more art oriented than I am. She’s a licensed art therapist. So yes.

(34:37) Stephanie Warner: Yes, she does a lot with art and it’s really cool. So yeah, just taking all of these things you could even go through the G.A.M.E.S. acrostic with God. Thinking about what you are grateful for and what memories you have with God. What you are anticipating and all that kind of stuff too, you can do that with God. You can do pretty much anything. So it’s awesome. Well, hey, thank you for sticking with us. Thank you. It’s so much fun to be on the trail with you all. Thank you for helping keep us here. To everyone who donates to Deeper Walk, to everybody who volunteers and prays for us, and shares with your friends. All the good work in the ministries that you guys are doing. Thank you for being the people of God and being on the trail. We appreciate you. Father, any final thoughts for appreciation.

(35:34) Marcus Warner: Actually I felt like saying, thank you to everybody who let me share some of my favorite joy moments with you today. It did me good to review those things and to share them. I feel like I was sharing them with friends. So it was very good.

(35:50) Stephanie Warner: Awesome. All right. See you next week.