The phrase “an attitude of gratitude” is one I heard from a yoga teacher years ago, and I wrote it off as cute but corny.  I hadn’t thought about again until last week, when it popped back into my mind while I was in the kitchen with students. The importance of attitude is one of the many things that Brainfood participants teach me every day. Before coming to Brainfood, I didn’t think about my disposition in terms of “attitude”; I used terms like mood or personality. But pretty much every Brainfood Group Expectations list that we generate here includes “positive attitude," and I’ve come to appreciate attitude as its own unique concept. It can be defined as “mental position”, or “orientation of the mind”, which seems to imply that we can change, or re-orient, that position. Attitude, to me, is about making a conscious choice to relate to the world in a certain way.

The last couple weeks have been hard. The stories in the news about Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and others are tough for all of us to hear.  At Brainfood, we’ve been talking about the events going on in our country and grappling with the difficult questions they raise in our minds. As I said to my students last week, Brainfood is about a lot of things  -- cooking, health, community, many others –- but one thing we are definitely about is authenticity. And it would be inauthentic, at least for me, to proceed with everyday life and not acknowledge how heavy things feel.  In the Brainfood kitchens recently, we’ve had some powerful conversations about what we’re reading and seeing in the news, and we hope Brainfood is always a place where open, authentic discussions are welcome. We seek to be a space where youth voices are heard and folks can be truly honest, even when things are tough. 

But Brainfood is also a place where positivity abounds. We strive to find positivity every day, not by denying the hard aspects of life but by consciously turning our attention to the wonderful ones. For me, the best way to make that attitude shift  is through the practice of making a gratitude list. So although Thanksgiving may be behind us, today I’m turning my attitude towards gratitude.

                                                                     
                                    Things I'm Grateful for at Brainfood
 

  1. Whole Grains

 5. Open Minds
 
  

Mac and Cheese with penne instead of macaroni? Upon hearing this idea, students said:. “Hm, I’ve never had that but I’m willing to try it!” And when they tasted it? “Sure, that works great!” I could certainly take a page out of their books. It can be hard to be flexible with our habits and expectations, but we’ve gotta start somewhere. And pasta is as good of a place as any.