Paul Thorn’s new album, Too Blessed to Be Stressed, is a slice of feel-good Southern blues-rock, Americana which will have you singing along, counting your blessings and smiling until the next time you get a chance to play it.
One of the songs is Don’t Let Nobody Rob You of Your Joy, where Thorn considers the trials of life on the road and the precariousness of not having a 9 to 5 job, but concludes that “I live by the words my grandpa always said Don’t let nobody rob you of your joy…” In the face of the difficulties that life throws at us:
Life is so short, none of us are here for long…
Step ut of the darkness, every woman, child and man
Open your window, let the light of life shine in
And don’t let nobody rob you of your job.
It’s hard not to get discouraged at times – many people reading this will be facing financial difficulties, relationship problems, health issues, personal defeats of one sort or another. More than enough to rob us of our joy. Reminds me of that Eric Bibb song, Don’t Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down:
You might slip, you might slide, you might
Stumble and fall by the road side
But don’t you ever let nobody drag your spirit down
Remember you’re walking up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you around.
There’s more than enough trouble in the world to drag our spirits down. Shawn Achor, who works in the area of Positive Psychology and has written an excellent book entitled The Happiness Advantage advises doing 5 things every day to train our brains towards happiness – and this is not simply positive thinking – he dismisses the idea of “putting on a happy face” or pretending your problems don’t exist. The five things are:
Gratitude, Journaling, Exercise, Meditation, Random Acts of Kindness.
He suggests writing down three new things you are grateful for, for 21 days in a row –try it! What happens is that your brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world for the positive, rather than the negative. Thankfulness is a key to personal happiness, and has been shown to lead to increased levels of energy, optimism, and empathy.
One of the other practices Achor highlights is doing random or conscious acts of kindness each day – it could be a simple as sending someone a text or email praising them or thanking them. What this does is to focus our minds on others rather than ourselves, and being kind has been noted by scientists as a valuable attribute which has the potential of altering our negative emotions.
Listen to Shawn Achor’s 12 minute, highly entertaining Ted talk here.
All of which, of course, is not new to those of us familiar with the wisdom in the ancient texts of the Bible. The Psalms are full of thanksgiving, even while the writers are in the most dire circumstances, and the New Testament writers, whose lives were no picnic, are constantly giving thanks and encouraging their readers to do the same. There is something quite powerful and life changing about being thankful. As for being kind and looking out for our neighbours – this is at the very heart of the Christian message.
Trouble is we get so entangled in the grasping, speed-driven, busy, consuming way of modern life, we forget to be thankful, we ignore the plight of others and we end up miserable, unfulfilled and unhappy – most of us with a pile of stuff beside us that we don’t really need.
Eric Bibb’s song advises us to put the focus on others rather than ourselves:
Walk with the rich, walk with the poor
Learn from everyone, that’s what life is for
And don’t you let nobody drag your spirit down
Remember you’re walking up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you around.
In his book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (Simon & Schuster, 2007), A. J. Jacobs says, “I’ve started to look at life differently. When you’re thanking God for every little joy – every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water – you can’t help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all.”
Be thankful – and don’t let nobody drag your spirit down.
