Gratitude

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  It is only through relinquishing these things that he (and we) can know Christ. When we give up our power, we gain access to a new kind of power: the power of Jesus’ resurrection and of participation in his sufferings. For most of us, our power (or powerlessness) is found in our wealth, education, age, intellect, cultural capital, social standing, gender, profession, religious status, political access, ethnicity, and race. Power can be destructive and divisive. But it can also be healing and nurturing when it is released, when it is used for others’ well-being and human flourishing. Henri Nouwen says that there is “the power that oppresses and destroys. . . . I want to show how that power is disarmed through powerlessness, and finally I want to proclaim the true power that liberates, reconciles, and heals.”3 We relinquish power when we truly listen to those who’ve been marginalized. We receive from them as we genuinely listen to them and respond. We relinquish power (and we use what power we have for good) when we use all our energies to make sure the marginalized are heard, respected, honored, and responded to. We relinquish power when we seek to give power away and move the margins to a welcoming center—a multivoiced, multipeopled, multicultural, new creation, new humanity. We relinquish power when we say no to opportunities so that other voices can be heard. We relinquish power when we say yes to justice and action so that other voices can be honored. We understand that justice, reconciliation, and healing cannot occur until we give power away. As James H. Cone says about racial power and reconciliation, “For white people to speak of reconciliation at the very moment that they are subduing every expression of black self-determination is the height of racist arrogance.”4 Reconciliation is only possible when the church takes on a different set of practices, habits, and postures. Relinquishing Power and Embracing PowerlessnessHenri Nouwen wrote a profound book on power and weakness. The lust for power corrupts the human spirit, damages relationships, perverts institutions, calcifies religions, destroys nature, entrenches inequalities, multiplies wars, and leads to all kinds of evil. God weeps. God calls his disciples to relinquish the lust for power and to embrace powerlessness. “In Jesus of Nazareth, the powerless God appeared among us to unmask the illusion of power. . . . God became human, in no way different from other human beings, to break through the walls of power in total weakness.”5 Jesus showed us what it means to give away power. He calls us to relinquish power, to embrace powerlessness, and to give power to others (especially to those that the world has despised or denied power). Mother Teresa reminds us that Jesus came into this world for one purpose, and that is to show us he loves us. He did that by giving up his power and his life for us.6 There is power in the gospel and in Christ.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  But I haven’t told what makes Herr Bildungs one of those special kinds. The third night I worked for him, nearly two years before what I just told you on the beach, he was working one night and I came to ask something. I surprised him, he turned and dropped the lens and it missed the rug and broke on the tiles. There it is. The two of us staring at the bits of glass, the metal ring. He was mad, too. He called me a little black devil and said I was clumsy and tried to hit me, and that I couldn’t work any more if I didn’t learn to knock first and know manners. But too many people had hit and cursed me already for it to make much difference but I was scared. He changed his mind. But can you see with that attention by kerosene light a white man, a black boy, a broken lens? I took trips with Herr Bildungs in my two and a half years with him to Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Caracas. Once we flew to Houston, Texas, for a weekend when he went to all sorts of meetings. That’s when I decided I would have to make my English much better. It was a good idea. Six months and Herr Bildungs went back to Germany. I started working on boats. The third one I was on stalled in New Orleans. The Captain disappeared. I liked the city, and in a week I had been everywhere from Dekator Street to Tulane. It was a city of many magicians. Four years, mostly there and the rest working the coast with New Orleans to return to, maybe made almost an American out of me. You see? And maybe gave me an advantage. Therese in New Orleans, big as a barrel of chocolate, who had red hair and wore dresses she was always near falling out, and white socks over ankles with lots of burn scars on them, and shoes split down the back. She modeled at art classes in the university, brought me books from there, and all the time sat in a bar I found out (first surprise) she owned and (second surprise) gave me a job on a boat I didn’t know she owned as well as the bar. She talked with me a lot and (third surprise) spoke Spanish. And became one, one afternoon sitting in front of her establishment on a sagging board between two pork tubs.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  We would like to thank our friends who’ve provided spiritual and emotional support during the writing of this book. Your encouragement and love have meant the world to us. Your friendship has enriched our lives. We are thankful to Jessie Giyou Kim, Sung Jin and Haejeong Sue Park, Ian and Libby Packer, Anton and Megan Du Toit, Ian and Carolyn Altman, Will and Erin Sessions, Darrell and Beth Johnson Jackson, Mark Koenig, Donald McKim, Joseph Cheah, and Janice Laidlaw. You have encouraged us personally and spiritually as we’ve written this book. Last, we thank our families for standing with us during the writing of this book. I (Graham) am deeply grateful for my wife, Felicity. I love you. I admire your strength of character, your passion for life, and your Christian leadership. You are the strongest, most determined leader I know, and I’m in awe of your abilities and integrity. I thank my eldest daughter, Madison, for challenging me to live out my beliefs and for never being afraid to challenge my convictions, behaviors, and ideas. You also challenge me to live a balanced life, including daily gym classes. Thanks for being willing to work out at the gym with your uncoordinated, unfit father and for inspiring me to live a fuller and richer life. I thank my daughter, Grace, for inspiring me to love Jesus more fully and to live a life of prayer, integrity, and compassion. You look right into my heart and name what is going on there, long before I can put words to my feelings, struggles, and hopes. Jesus often speaks powerfully to me through your words. I thank my youngest daughter, Dakotah, for making my life so much more enjoyable and for filling my life with laughter. Our countless hours of watching movies, playing video and board games, walking in the sun, and just having great fun have enriched my life in ways I can never describe. You make me laugh so hard my sides hurt! My family has loved and supported me throughout the writing of this book and has sacrificed so much. I’m so thankful for each of you. I (Grace) sincerely feel indebted to my husband, Perry, for standing by me in all that I do. He has been patient and kind during my time of writing and always encouraged me to carry on. His management of our children’s dance, soccer, and extracurricular events kept me sane while writing this book. I am grateful to my oldest son, Theodore, for being compassionate, loving, and kind. He is focused on his biomedical engineering studies in college, and he has already won awards and scholarships, which makes his mom’s life easier, as I do not have to worry about him or his grades. His hard work and dedication to his studies have been inspirational during my time of writing. To my beautiful daughter, Elisabeth, who is always going beyond expectations to love and bring joy and happiness to all those around her.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  May the God of peace and love be with you as you reinforce others’ agency, practice hospitality, seek restoration, pursue reconciliation, and live in peace (2 Cor 13:11 ). May God fill you with passion to recover life together—as a new creation and a redeemed community. May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, rooting and grounding you in love, so that you will know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love, and be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:17-19 ). Be encouraged as you seek to live differently! You can live an extraordinary, Spirit-empowered life that changes the world. You can practice these nine practices and transform a dehumanized world. You can indeed make a difference and bear fruit that will last! “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Eph 3:20-21 ). AcknowledgmentsT his book draws from many relationships. The stories and ideas we share throughout this book come from our many friendships and from our diverse personal, professional, learning, and worshiping communities. Healing Our Broken Humanity grew out of many conversations with colleagues, family, and friends, and many experiences of churches and individuals bringing lasting hope, deep healing, and positive change in a broken world. We would like to thank Helen Lee of InterVarsity Press for encouraging us to come together to write this book. Helen’s belief in us and in this book was immensely encouraging to us and was key to getting this book launched. We are especially grateful to our InterVarsity Press editor, Al Hsu, for his enthusiasm, wise advice, and constant guidance throughout the writing of this book. We are thankful for the learning communities of which we are a part and for the space and encouragement they provide us to wrestle with these ideas and put them in practice. We are grateful for the support shown to us by our theological colleges (for Graham, Morling Theological College in Sydney, Australia; for Grace, Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana). Our deep thanks to our many colleagues and friends in these learning communities and educational institutions, who have supported us during our time of writing. Special thanks to those who have provided wonderful feedback, support, and friendship along the way. These include Michael Frost, Darrell Jackson, Karina Kreminski, David Starling, Gayle Kent, Keith Mitchell, Tim MacBride, Andrew Sloane, Rebekah Coles, Miyon Chung, Kristen Cairns, Anthony Petterson, Ian O’Harae, Edwina Murphy, Marc Rader, and Ian Packer. We have sought to put the ideas of this book into practice in our local church communities. Our thanks go to Thornleigh Community Baptist Church and First Presbyterian Church for loving and supporting us, and for helping us see how local churches can live into these practices with courage and hope.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” But the public presentation of Jesus is in the Temple, not just in a home; the report goes out to all who “were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” and not just to the nearby hill country; and the prophecy of destiny is given by both Simeon and Anna and focuses exclusively on Jesus. In 2:21–38: When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  As I read the published results of recent Galilean archeology, I find a strange phenomenon. Scholars do not simply describe what they have found but also give interpretive social commentary on that data. That commentary is often somewhat caustically critical of what someone like myself might say about the historical Jesus. But where does their wider social matrix come from? Where did they get it? Let me give an example. Suppose we agree that there was extensive urbanization in Lower Galilee in the first quarter of the first century? How do you decide, in general, whether that was good or bad news for the local peasants? And, be it good or bad, was it so for most, many, or only some of them? How would you answer that question archeologically? And, if you do not know how to answer it by specific archeology, should you answer it by general anthropology? Should you, at least, know that such general answers exist and must be presumed pending specific objection? Watch very carefully, therefore, what I do in this chapter. I choose three basic emphases of recent Galilean archeology. In each case I use an epigraph from the Lenski-Kautsky model—that is, from anthropology—that should, at least, sensitize the archeologist to possible general interpretations of the data discovered. Next, I look at their general interpretation of that data and especially at the social conclusions they announce after it or presume before it. Finally, my overarching point is that what the archeologists have discovered fits very well, often despite their own assertions, with the Lenski-Kautsky model of commercialization precipitating resistance. A final comment. I am not a field archeologist. I lived for two years between 1965 and 1967 at the French Biblical and Archeological School just north of the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City. I visited as part of my studies all the major archeological sites not only in Jordan and Israel but from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Iran, from Greece and Turkey to Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. I am deeply grateful for the difficult work of Near Eastern archeologists and appreciate, as an outsider, their financial, logistical, and especially political problems. I respect their archeological conclusions, which I often have time to read only in popular summary and which I accept on the level of straightforward data. My present disagreements are with their social conclusions, which seem to contradict general anthropological ones and which would therefore need specific arguments and proofs to substantiate them. Countryside and City Another important characteristic of agrarian societies was the regular and widespread occurrence of urban communities …[which] never constituted more than 10 per cent of the total [population of an agrarian empire], and in some instances accounted for less than 5 per cent…. [But] despite this fact, the residents of urban centers usually dominated agrarian societies politically, economically, religiously, and culturally. Gerhard E. Lenski, Power and Privilege , pp.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Dev hollers, kicking his feet to motorboat the raft around. That night after he’s tucked in, I do try to stretch out my standard two-sentence prayer habit a little longer by dredging up a list of stuff to be grateful for, though not on my knees—no way am I gonna grovel like a reptile. Sitting in a red leather chair, I notice the cherry furniture Warren’s parents gave us. I close my eyes a second, saying, Thanks for the furniture. And the rent. Thanks Warren hasn’t left me and taken our boy. The exercise seems so self-helpy and puerile, but a few more things come to mind inadvertently. Thanks Dev doesn’t have a fever. Mother’s sober. Lecia’s business is going great, and her new boyfriend’s a prince. Thanks for Joan the Bone and Lux. Also the infirmary this weekend… Enumerating these small things actually pierces me with a sliver of feeling fortunate. Then from that one moonlit meeting, the young doctor’s face rises up in me, and I think of what she’d said about asking for my dream, so I add, While we’re at it, I’d like some money. Not a handout. I’m willing to work for it. It takes me a full five minutes to shut up begging, and it sounds crazy to say it, but for the first time in about a week, I don’t want a drink at all. It’s an odd sensation, since the craving’s shadowed my every waking instant for the past few years. But I abruptly stop feeling my skin like a too-tight sausage casing. (This an unbeliever might call self-hypnosis; a believer might say it’s the presence of God. Let’s call it a draw and concede that the process of listing my good fortune stopped my scrambling fear, and in relinquishing that, some solid platform slid under me.) I know people needier and way more deserving have prayed far harder for stuff they needed more: to feed starving children, say, to get a negative biopsy result. Nonetheless, it’s a stone fact that—within a week or so of my starting to pray—a man I don’t know calls me from the Whiting Foundation to give me a thirty-five-thousand-dollar prize I hadn’t applied for. Some anonymous angel had nominated me and sent in both my poems and a hunk of a crappy autobiographical novel about my kidhood—maybe pinched from the writing group I’d once been in. But the call brings no celebration. If anything, I call Warren feeling awful I got the prize instead of him. Plus, the foundation insists on flying me to New York to pick up the check at a ceremony flanked by two mandatory cocktail parties—a small one before, a large one after. I know with clammy certainty that I won’t last fifteen minutes at a cocktail party without imbibing. Later, I cackle like a madwoman when Joan suggests my quote-unquote higher power orchestrated this. Horse dookey, I say. Surely you don’t believe that.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  The truth was, if it helped with money, Daddy would sign me over in a heartbeat. I was the one who couldn’t bear legally lopping myself off from an upbringing I was working so hard to shed. So I lied that it would hurt my parents too bad, the same way I used to tell those neighbors I horned in on—right before I figured they’d throw me out—that I had to rush home for a curfew that didn’t exist. Well, think about it, Walt said. We were at the register by then. How’ll I ever pay you back? I said. For what? He limped back to leave a bill under the salt shaker. All these lunches, dinners, jobs…. You’re not gonna pay me back, he said. It’s not that linear. He pushed open the glass door, and I stepped into spring air. When you’re in my place, you’re gonna pick up some kid’s check. The idea that Walt was deranged enough to envision me in the position to buy somebody lunch was maybe a bigger vote of confidence than the adoption offer. When I asked him to drop me at the health service for the sore throat I couldn’t shake all spring, he said, Maybe it’s just hard to say goodbye. I whipped around so he wouldn’t see my eyes fill, since I was dead sure I wouldn’t make it back up there. But Walt never took his eyes off me. During the time I gypsied around, feebly trying to establish a base, he stayed in touch. No matter where I had a mailbox, his letters sat inside. Which is maybe why—months after working retail down in Austin—I came back to Minneapolis, where a friend knew a glitzy restaurant where I could bartend. Even there, Walt showed up with other professors to eat the bar’s crappy sandwiches. He always left a book or two or a concert ticket, an article on dream research or memory—subjects he knew I kept up with. He never gave up on me, I only stopped being matriculated. 4There’s No Biz Like Po-BizPeople should like poetry the way a child likes snow, and they would if poets wrote it. —a letter by Wallace Stevens In the dim realm of that horseshoe bar, I was boss, credibly lying to wives and business partners who phoned in that my patrons were not in fact sitting before me hours on end, imbibing. Such lies kept my tip jar stuffed. Plus compared to those guys—with their car wrecks and one-night stands, their lost families and jobs—my occasional blackout or sidewalk pukefest was bush league.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  (60:11; 108:12) Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. (85:7) Give me understanding…(119:34, 73, 125, 144, 169) Give me life…(119:37, 40, 107, 154, 156) Psalm 119 repeats like a drumbeat its requests for understanding and life five times each. In those examples you have, once again, that oscillation between the individual and the communal request for assistance and deliverance. Some of those prayers of request are positive (for us) and some are negative (against them); some are for an individual and some are for the community; some are implicit, by complaint or lament, and some are explicit, by plea or petition. But in one form or another request is the dominant type of biblical prayer. It is important to notice that, as in the final example, even a personal request does not mean self-centered individualism, but a plea for union with God, for “understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (119:34) and for “life according to your justice” (119:156). Psalms of Gratitude. In the magnificent biblical book of Psalms the second largest category is psalms of gratitude. Sometimes the key word is “praise,” but at other times it is “give thanks.” Very often, however, those two terms appear in poetic parallelism; “praise” in one half verse is balanced by “thanksgiving” in the corresponding half verse: Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. (30:4) We…will give thanks to you forever; from generation to generation we will recount your praise. (79:13) I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you among the nations. (108:3) The rhythm of prayer in the biblical book of Psalms is that double chant of request followed by gratitude, petition by thanksgiving, and complaint by praise. Whether we look at general types through the entire book of Psalms or themes within individual psalms, that is the dyad that appears again and again. It is also, of course, a sequence we know full well from the ordinary and everyday human experience of appealing for something and then acknowledging its donor. “Please” and “Thanks” are likewise the systolic and diastolic beats of the Psalter’s biblical heart. But that very dynamism of request and gratitude raises some very fundamental questions about the purpose of prayer. Is prayer primarily or even exclusively about our wants and needs—even our most altruistic and other-focused ones? Is the combination of request and gratitude primarily or even exclusively about keeping an open contact with divine assistance that both thanks God for past positive responses and ensures future ones? Is Christian prayer a careful cost accounting that thanks God for what has already come our way and praises God for what is yet to follow it? Bluntly, succinctly, is prayer all about me, you, us, and a God who must be regularly praised and complimented for favors past, present, and yet to come?

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  It blesses me an instant like incense. My eyes sting, and I blurt out, Thanks for them. I feel the stillness around me widen a notch. Thanks that my son is sleeping safe at home without fever or coughing; and my husband, who may yet take me back. The boundaries of my skin grow thin as I kneel there squinting my eyes shut. For a nanosecond, I am lucent. Inside it: an idea, the thread of a different perspective than any I’ve ever had. It’s a thought so counterintuitive, so unlike how I think, it feels as if it originates from outside me. The voice—the idea—comes in solid quiet in the midst of psychic chaos, and it says, If Dev hadn’t been sick so much, you’d have kept drinking …. Which is wholly true. If Dev had been one of those blank-eyed, anesthetized little blobs who slept infancy away, I could’ve sotted up his early years. Staying up with him—what with the trips to the hospital, which I’d thought were my punishment or ruin—I’d found a strange kind of rescue. (Vis-à-vis God speaking to me, I don’t mean the voice of Charlton Heston playing Moses booming from on high, but reversals of attitude so contrary to my typical thoughts—so solidly true—as to seem divinely external. And quiet these thoughts are, strong and quiet. View it as some sane self or healthy ego taking charge, if you like. By checking in to the hospital, I’ve said in some deep way uncle , or—as they said in my old neighborhood— calf rope , referring to an animal hogtied in a rodeo arena. I’ve stopped figuring so hard and begun to wait, sometimes with increasing hope, to be shown.) Then it hits me. I’m actually kneeling before a toilet. The throne, as other drunks call it. How many drunken nights and slungover mornings did I worship at this altar, emptying myself of poison. And yet to pray to something above me, something invisible, had—before now—seemed degrading. And I start to laugh, kneeling there in a striped industrial robe—a barking laugh that devolves into a skittery madwoman’s giggle, so I have to cover my mouth before somebody comes in thinking I’ve gone off.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Sara Algoe, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research has found a substantial link between gratitude and employee efficiency and productivity. “Gratitude is important for forming and maintaining the most important relationships of our lives, those with the people we interact with every day,” she says. Her work shows employees who express and receive gratitude at work are also more likely to volunteer for tasks, step up to accomplish hard things, and work better as a part of a team. Furthermore, her research shows that leaders who regularly offer gratitude are scored higher by their team members on measured attributes of compassion, consideration, empathy, and (gasp) even love. We aren’t talking here about general praise that has little meaning, e.g., “Good work, team.” We like to remind leaders that if you can say it to a dog, it’s not gratitude. No, what we are talking about is gratitude offered to another person with sincerity and specificity for what they’ve contributed. When anyone accepts such thanks, neurotransmitters in the brain release dopamine and serotonin, which are responsible for a good mood. By consciously practicing gratitude, we can strengthen these neural pathways and create a physiological superhighway to harmony within our team members. Chris Schembra, author of Gratitude and Pasta , has hosted hundreds of gratitude intervention dinners in New York City, where companies can better engage with their clients or employees. At each of the 7:47 Club dinners (the time the meal starts), Chris asks his guests the same question: “If you could give credit and thanks to one person in your life, who you don’t give enough credit or thanks to, who would that be?” Schembra told us, “People often walk into our dinners feeling lonely, unfulfilled, disconnected, insecure. They listen to others share the stories from their past about their mothers, fathers, dogs, third-grade teachers, ex-girlfriends. They realize they’re not as alone as they thought. Everybody can relate to a mother, whether she deserted them or nurtured them; a grandpa who took them to soccer practice. By sharing our histories we decrease anxiety.” The 7:47 Club’s research director Madeline Haslam points to the vital role of leaders in setting an example with gratitude. In 1961, Albert Bandura at Stanford University conducted what has become known as the Bobo doll experiment. The professor filmed adults behaving aggressively toward a Bobo doll, an inflatable clown that bounces back up after being pushed or punched. A test group of children later watched the videos and were placed in a room with the doll; other children watched no video. “If the children saw adults beating up the doll, they displayed much more physical aggression to the doll than the control group,” said Haslam. “This observational learning does not just happen with children.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  After decades of working with CEOs and business owners, I’ve noticed many have a negative mind-set when it comes to dealing with stress—a mindset that needs to be changed. Anxiety at Work offers practical ideas to help leaders develop healthier mindsets and healthier teams. This is a smartly written, step-by-step guide to creating a work culture that will attract and retain great people.” —John C. Maxwell, #1 New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned leadership expert “I’ve personally known anxiety—the struggle just to get out of bed every morning. Overcoming these feelings in myself, and helping others face their challenges, has been my life’s work for the past decade. I’m so grateful Gostick and Elton have turned their attention to helping in the working world, where tens of millions of employees feel overwhelmed and overanxious. In this fabulous new book, leaders will learn how to identify anxiety in their team members, understand the triggers of anxiety, and provide the right support. Anxiety at Work is the tool that businesses have been waiting for.” —Mel Robbins, daytime talk show host, CNN on-air analyst, and #1 bestselling author of The 5 Second Rule “When our team members feel too much anxiety, they attack change; they become combative or controlling as they try to ease the pain they feel. This makes organizational change difficult, even impossible. In this brilliant new book, Gostick and Elton help leaders build resilience with practical tools culled from decades coaching leaders to improve their organizational cultures.” —Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, world’s #1 leadership thinker and author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There “Anxiety at Work is brimming with practical ideas on how to create a safe, productive place to work—from the globally recognized thought-leaders in culture and employee engagement. This desperately needed guide will become an instant classic.” —Dr. Tasha Eurich, New York Times bestselling author of Insight and Bankable Leadership “Savoring this book feels like snuggling up in a warm comforter on a cold day. The enormous demands of our world are mitigated by using the insights offered. The ideas, stories, and tools will help anyone tame apprehensions and turn anxiety into assurance.” —Dr. Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Collegiate Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; partner, The RBL Group “Gostick and Elton have a powerful ability to tap into the true essence of workplace stress and team dysfunction, and, most important, offer up practical solutions that will help move any organization to a healthy, productive place and effect positive change.” —Chris Rainey, host, HR Leaders podcast, the #1 HR podcast in the world “Anxiety at Work offers leaders a simple yet powerful approach to increase productivity and resilience by building a more compassionate workplace.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When Luther received the horrific news, he was with Johannes Kessler, one of the students he had spoken with that night in the Black Bear Inn. Kessler said that Luther “began to cry silently” and then said, “I thought I would be the first to be martyred for the sake of this holy gospel; but I was not worthy of it.” But then, in what many said was his typical way, he quickly began giving thanks to Christ, who was at last beginning to “create fruit for our—no, his—Word and to make new martyrs.”4 Luther almost instantly was able to see the bigger picture, to see God’s larger perspective on the situation, and he knew that despite the sadness of what had happened on a human level, it was nonetheless something for which to praise and thank God. In fact, the painful news of what these young courageous men endured for their faith caused Luther to want to do something he had never done before, something he would do much more of in the years ahead, and something that would be one of his principal contributions to Christian worship over the next half millennium. Luther wrote a hymn. It is ten or twelve stanzas and narrates the story of their martyrdom. The first stanza reads, A new song to the Lord we’ll raise, Of what His truth hath done; For His great glory and His praise A triumph He hath won. At Brussels in the Netherlands, His might has been made known; Two boys who loved the Lord’s commands, The power of truth have shown: Great was the faith the Lord of heaven To these two Christian boys had given.5 Luther was sensitive to the historic and spiritual import of what had happened in Brussels. The new work that God had graciously chosen him to bring into the world had just been crowned with the greatest honor. God had confirmed the truth of what they all were engaged in by allowing two innocents to be murdered just as Christ himself had been murdered, so that what man and the devil had done for evil, God would now turn to good. The news of their bravery would be sung about and spread abroad, encouraging others in their faith. It was a moment in the newly kindled life of God’s people that deserved to be honored, and in Luther’s telling of their story in the hymn it was and would continue so to be honored. For Luther, their martyrdom represented a new stage in the movement God had begun. The last words of the hymn make that clear: The summer now is at the door, The winter’s gloom is gone; The vernal gales are flitting o’er, Bright days are coming on: God hath Himself His work begun, His work He never leaves undone.6

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  I would also (but refuse to) be gravely and inexcusably remiss in failing to thank my own crackerjack team, led by HRH Elisa Leberis, whose various efforts on my behalf are so encyclopaedic as to beggar description here, and without which I’m sure I might not only lack the tremendous boon of this finished book, but shelter, shoes, and teeth too. I am particularly grateful to Ruthie Totheroh and Brandon Santulli for helping me track down the source citations to some of the more wriggly quotations herein; thus any and all errors along those lines I here must also—and alas—lay at their young feet.* I am everlastingly grateful to my wife, Susanne, and our daughter, Annerose, for their love and grace toward me, not least in bearing up under such jiggy idiosyncrasies as sometimes attend the messy birth of manuscripts. Finally, I wish to thank my dearest friends, Markus Spieker and Greg Thornbury, to whom I have very generously dedicated this book (and all ancillary products proceeding herefrom); the former for strongly suggesting this book to me in an afternoon phone call from Berlin (I was at the Arctic Club Hotel in Seattle, before dawn) in 2012; the latter for convincing me, during a more recent dinner conversation at Orsay restaurant here in Manhattan, that Luther’s was an extraordinary story I really must tell, preferably before the happy quincentenary in October 2017 had passed us. To have such friends as I—and to know it—is to horselaugh at the wealth of poor Croesus. And I do. APPENDIXFREDERICK’S DREAMThe following account of a dream supposedly dreamt by Frederick the Wise the night before October 31, 1517, forms a large part of the legend surrounding Martin Luther. Whether there is some root of authenticity to this remains unknown, but it has been very widely circulated and is worth recording here. We step a moment out of the domain of history to narrate a dream that the elector Frederick of Saxony had on the night preceding the memorable day on which Luther affixed his theses to the door of the Castle Church. The elector told it the next morning to his brother Duke John, who was then residing with him at his palace of Schweinitz, six leagues* from Wittenberg. The dream is recorded by all the chroniclers of the time. Of its truth there is no doubt, however we may interpret it. We cite it here as a compendious and dramatic epitome of the affair of the theses and the movement that grew out of them: On the morning of the 31st October, 1517, the elector said to Duke John, “Brother, I must tell you a dream which I had last night, and the meaning of which I should like much to know. It is so deeply impressed on my mind, that I will never forget it, were I to live a thousand years. For I dreamed it thrice, and each time with new circumstances.”

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  And then there’s the gratitude where there just aren’t any words anymore, all there is is this swollen feeling around your heart and no way to talk about it. You know that feeling? It’s the one that tells you to go to the person, get on your knees, and cover your face with your hands, grateful, humble, bound. I’m pretty sure that every person for whom I have this feeling would find it very, very awkward if I actually did that. So instead I’ll just write a list. Here, in approximate chronological order, are the people who helped me in ways I don’t have words for: Nancy Nutt-Chase Cynthia Graham and John Bancroft Erick Janssen David Lohrmann Richard Stevens Lindsay Edgecombe Sarah Knight Julie Ohotnicky Amelia Nagoski Stephen Crowley Grateful. Humble. Bound. Thank you. about the author [image "Photo: Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., author" file=image_rsrc64M.jpg] Photo by Jon Crispi EMILY NAGOSKI is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life and The Come As You Are Workbook, and coauthor, with her sister, Amelia, of New York Times bestseller Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She began her work as a sex educator at the University of Delaware, where she volunteered as a peer sex educator while studying psychology with minors in cognitive science and philosophy. She went on to earn a M.S. in Counseling and a Ph.D. in Health Behavior, both from Indiana University, with clinical and research training at the Kinsey Institute. Now she combines sex education and stress education to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. Emily lives in western Massachusetts with two dogs, two cats, and a cartoonist. [image "Logo: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks" file=image_rsrc64N.jpg] SimonandSchuster.com www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Emily-Nagoski [image "Icon: Facebook" file=image_rsrc64P.jpg] [image "Icon: Twitter" file=image_rsrc64R.jpg] [image "Icon: Instagram" file=image_rsrc64S.jpg] @simonbooks We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook. Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Amplify it. Create space for it in your team meetings, in your business, and in your brand,” said HubSpot’s Burke. This means listening to those experiences. Evelyn Walter, executive director and HR leader for Cummins engine and power generation business in North American distribution, sought to listen following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. A Fortune 500 company with sixty thousand employees around the world, Cummins has six core values, one of which is diversity and inclusion. Thus, when the marches began, Walter told us she felt supported by her organization to send a handwritten card to every Black person on her staff. “I got approval to use home addresses, and I wrote lengthy notes about how I wanted to support them,” she said. “I asked what I could do for them and their families. I was in the car Friday with my husband and daughters and got an email from a woman named Mercedes. She is incredibly positive; she makes lemonade out of lemons every day. The main message was she appreciated the specific care for her and her family. She said, ‘I’ve seen your leadership, I know this is sincere.’ That was kind, and yet it was concerning because she obviously knows other people who may not be genuine.” Added Walter, the act of writing out dozens of notes on a Saturday morning spurred her to create further connections. “I wanted to find more people to check in with. What about my Latinx employees? What about my team members who are gay? That’s what it created in me.” HubSpot’s Burke added to this idea. She has served as the LGBTQ+ executive sponsor at her firm, but didn’t feel she knew much about the experience of folks who identify as transgender and how she could best support them. She spent time researching the issue, and hours listening to colleagues she admired who identify as transgender. In doing so she learned more about preferred pronoun usage, the transition process, and how she could be a more supportive colleague, friend, and leader. Admitting you don’t know all the answers and being vulnerable enough to address your blind spots proactively is a vital part of the role of anyone who wishes to be an ally. Yes, most of us will make a mistake or two in this process —we are all human—but through listening and education we will start to understand how to better help all those whose lives we touch. Method 2: Sponsor Karen Catlin, author of Better Allies and former vice president of engineering at Adobe, told of working early in her career for a software company that was acquired by a larger firm. “In the first few months following the acquisition, I noticed something. My new manager, Digby Horner—who had been at the larger company for many years—said things in meetings along the lines of: ‘What I learned from Karen is . . .’ By doing this, Digby helped me build credibility with my new colleagues.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  We were visiting a hospital one Friday and were privileged to witness a special meeting. Each week one staff member received what they called the Grace Under Fire trophy, a fire hose mounted on a block of wood. The award was brought out to much applause, and was given from peer-to-peer as a way to recognize something admirable that a staff member had done during the week. In the case we watched, a nurse had nominated a fellow staff member who had taken one of her weekend shifts. The scheduled eight hours had turned into twelve as the ER filled up, but the substitute kept her cool. In presenting the award, the nominating nurse not only expressed her deep appreciation, but spoke about core values like dependability and teamwork. The team’s manager later told us that this Friday ritual has not only added a touch of fun but has elevated everyone’s behavior and strengthened relationships. The award presentation was fast (followed by well-deserved snacks), and yet it reinforced in a powerful way what the staff members valued the most: keeping cool under pressure while helping each other. Turn Doubts into AssuranceAs we have visited worksites like this and talked with leaders throughout the world, we have found some other practical methods whereby gratitude can turn doubts into assurance. Method 1: Make Gratitude Clear, Specific, and SincereGeneric comments around the workplace such as “great work” have never cut it, especially when it comes to reassuring anxious team members. Employees hear such nonspecific praise and tend to dismiss it, especially those who may be feeling self-doubt. Instead, grateful leaders home in on a particular aspect of an achievement or manner in which a person is going about their work. For instance, “Nice job on that report” is good, and certainly better than saying nothing. But better yet would be to say something to the effect of “I love how your report provides a short narrative to go along with the numbers. That overview of the market and our place in it was very helpful when we had to explain the findings to the executive team. Nice job.” Carlos Aguilera, director of Avis Budget Group’s premium brand strategy, is one of the best managers we’ve seen at making gratitude specific to the company’s values. When we met him, he was general manager of the Dallas Fort Worth Airport location, and his team’s pre-shift meetings would always kick off with specific gratitude. He’d ask: “Okay, who saw someone doing something great yesterday?” One day we were with Aguilera when a shift supervisor suggested Delana should be singled out.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  He avoids them because he is a good guy. Indeed, it can be hard for leaders to have close friends in the employee ranks, either because they can’t separate friendships from business decisions, or because they have to make tough calls that may destroy those relationships. “There’s plenty of research supporting the idea that having friends at work makes you happier and more engaged,” Bregman adds. “But the research doesn’t address that friendships at work are tricky, especially when you’re the boss.” This means for those who are promoted from individual contributor to manager, or from manager to a manager-of-managers, they can choose to be proactive. Says Professor Art Markman of the University of Texas at Austin, “Make an effort to take some of your [work] friends out and talk to them about some of the stresses and responsibilities of the new position. Help them understand some of the tensions you’re feeling. You may assume that your friends will implicitly understand the tensions you have, but they are much more likely to be sympathetic if you have an open conversation.” Method 4: Provide Frequent Validation What else can a manager do to facilitate feelings of connection and avoid exclusion in their teams? We turn to a commencement address given at Harvard University by Oprah Winfrey: “I have to say that the single most important lesson I learned in twenty-five years talking every single day to people was that there’s a common denominator in our human experience: We want to be validated. We want to be understood. I’ve done over thirty-five thousand interviews in my career. And as soon as that camera shuts off, everyone turns to me and inevitably, in their own way, asks this question: ‘Was that okay?’ I heard it from President Bush. I heard it from President Obama. I’ve heard it from heroes and from housewives. I’ve heard it from victims and perpetrators of crimes. I even heard it from Beyoncé in all of her Beyoncéness. . . . [We] all want to know, ‘Did you hear me? Do you see me? Did what I say mean anything to you?’” What Winfrey speaks about is a leader noticing and appreciating a person’s inherent value. That’s part of gratitude, which we’ll dive into more in Chapter 9. The point of gratitude isn’t just about thanking others for their accomplishments, it’s about helping people see their worth as a colleague and a human being. And it pays off for managers, too. In one Glassdoor survey, more than half of employees said feeling more appreciation from their boss would help them stay longer at their company. Method 5: Include Remotes A last suggestion in the process of fighting exclusion is to carefully include those who work remotely all or part of the time, which can certainly be anxiety- inducing in and of itself. One of the growing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that more organizations have embraced the concept of working from home.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  An employee of ours once said she wanted to become an audiologist working with children. While we thought it was a noble goal, we couldn’t find a way to fit her training on that skill into our company needs. She ended up going to school in the evenings, and our support came in the form of giving her time off early a few days a week. [image "images" file=Image00003.jpg] Next, after an employee starts to learn and acquires enough proficiency in the new skill to potentially help the team, a manager will find avenues to apply it. The employee will then contribute the new skill to helping the organization. Next, if the employee is making an effort and the skill is starting to make the team better, it’s necessary for the manager to reward the behavior through gratitude and encourage continued learning. The manager will also provide coaching to ensure alignment with the company and team needs, and to offer any further help that’s needed to grow and remove obstacles. Finally, it comes time to realign and consider what’s next. If the skill has been of benefit to the employee and the team, the employee may continue utilizing it and gaining more knowledge. If the manager or employee come to realize the skill is not a good fit, they may stop and try something new, or the employee may work on the skill on personal time. If the worker hasn’t quite mastered the skill yet, the manager and employee may work together to continue progressing. Anthony shared an example. When he was working at the University of Utah School of Medicine’s Andrology and Epigenetics Research Lab, his leader Dr. Kenneth (Ki) Aston suggested Anthony’s usefulness would be enhanced if he learned R programming, used to perform statistical data analysis. “I said I would try, but I wasn’t confident,” Anthony said. “Ki told me how valuable it could be for me. He set a goal and gave me the time and resources to learn. He also assigned one of the doctoral students to help me stumble through the learning process and understand how it all applied to the experiments we were running in the lab.” The doctoral student patiently watched as Anthony typed out code. “She could have input it in minutes; but if I had just watched her code, I wouldn’t have learned. As I was typing, she would teach me, ‘That part of the code tells the program to create categories, and this one labels the categories.’ So I learned how the coding would affect other experiments. “From there, she let me enter values and datapoints to really make sure I got a chance to master what she’d shown me. She never did the work for me, and she didn’t expect me to be able to magically replicate what she did.” Within a few weeks, Anthony was proficient enough to help run analyses for several experiments.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  Anthony shared an example. When he was working at the University of Utah School of Medicine’s Andrology and Epigenetics Research Lab, his leader Dr. Kenneth (Ki) Aston suggested Anthony’s usefulness would be enhanced if he learned R programming, used to perform statistical data analysis. “I said I would try, but I wasn’t confident,” Anthony said. “Ki told me how valuable it could be for me. He set a goal and gave me the time and resources to learn. He also assigned one of the doctoral students to help me stumble through the learning process and understand how it all applied to the experiments we were running in the lab.” The doctoral student patiently watched as Anthony typed out code. “She could have input it in minutes; but if I had just watched her code, I wouldn’t have learned. As I was typing, she would teach me, ‘That part of the code tells the program to create categories, and this one labels the categories.’ So I learned how the coding would affect other experiments. “From there, she let me enter values and datapoints to really make sure I got a chance to master what she’d shown me. She never did the work for me, and she didn’t expect me to be able to magically replicate what she did.” Within a few weeks, Anthony was proficient enough to help run analyses for several experiments. He acknowledges he could have been doing the wet bench work that he was brought in to tackle. He also could have run the analysis on Excel, a program he was familiar with. But his lab leader knew that R would be important for Anthony to learn as he expanded his progress as a scientist. After he had a foundational grasp of the language and was able to start contributing, Dr. Aston told him, “There’s a lot more to learn on R, but this will do. Thanks for your contribution.” And Anthony left the lab that day knowing that his efforts had been valued. “I became even more dedicated to the lab after that. It made me feel like they cared about me ten times more,” he said. “Developing a new skill made me feel like I was growing personally but also gaining stock and contributing to the lab’s goals.” Method 5: Make Learning Real-Time Want to see eyes glaze over or anxiety amp up? Mandate that busy employees attend a training session on “business writing skills,” or “negotiating,” or some such course that has little alignment to their day-to-day needs, says Steve Glaveski, CEO of Collective Campus in Melbourne, Australia.