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Grateful
POTENT Gratitude is a way of looking at and finding all that you can be grateful for in life: the good and the positive. POTENT stands for People, Opportunities, Things, Experiences, Nature and Thoughts. These are the gifts we can look for and see every day. When we program our brains through daily journaling, meditation or “POTENT huddles” with our teams, we can begin to shed the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) that characterizes today’s world—and the good starts to stick in our brains.
On the other hand, POTENT also stands for Problems, Obstacles, Troubles, “Eggos” (existential crises), Natural Disasters and Transitions. These are the growth opportunities in life, and we can be grateful for the lessons and accomplishments that arise from overcoming them. They can also be programmed into a daily practice that helps transform the not-so-good into amazing learning experiences. It flips the switch on a challenge and turns it into an opportunity!
Peoria has gone through an amazing few years, with both good times and bad. We are a resilient community that has so much to be grateful for and many great lessons to learn from our past. We are working to change the conversation to a POTENT one as it relates to Peoria’s future.
Posted By: Betty Schlacter // Date: 09/15/2021 My gratitude lessons from my mom and Peoria’s river! Lucky me as my childhood days were filled with exploring the shoreline of the Illinois River just out my back door. This picturesque river created opportunities for daily discoveries and occasionally life challenges. When the river flooded our back […]
Posted By: Janie Pollitt // Date: 09/10/2021 I am grateful for the greenhouse and garden because of all the joy it has given me throughout my 64 years. We would come to Peoria to see the Lily and Poinsettia shows as well as just to take a walk through. Now a Peorian, I took […]
Posted By: Betty Schlacter // Date: 09/09/2021 I am grateful for the 125 plus years of the Peoria Stadium and the fond memories made and cherished as I attended the Annual Turkey Day Football games. Former Manual football players, my dad and his brother, gathered up me and my younger brothers and our group of […]
Posted By: Bob Woolsey // Date: 09/05/2021 What is the meaning of the blue circles and the yellow one at about 1:00 on the POTENT Gratitude logo? I can explain. The yellow circle symbolizes you. You are at the center of your life. No matter how you look at it, you are in control of […]
Posted By: Ron Nakamoto // Date: 09/02/2021 I’m very grateful for this website and the POTENT Gratitude model itself. We live in a world of seemingly endless negative news: Covid, natural disasters, political divisiveness, social unrest, etc. A lot of us are emotionally exhausted from this negativity, the stress it causes, and the everyday struggles […]
A rendering of POTENT Gratitude Park Dr. Rick Hanson, a prominent neuroscientist, is known for suggesting that the human brain has a natural negativity bias, internalizing negative experiences more deeply than positive ones. According to Dr. Hanson’s “Velcro and Teflon theory,” the brain is like Velcro (i.e., sticky) for negative experiences and Teflon (slippery) for […]
