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The object of your appreciation or gratitude can be in the external world or in your memory. It can be a person or a thing, a song or a saint, so long as you really appreciate it.

The more often you practice this simple gratitude exercise, the easier it becomes to slip into a state of appreciation. It tends to bring your heart rhythm into coherence and bring you into a deeper sense of connectedness with the universe. It’s like a prayer of thanks. It is up to you whether or not you give it a religious connotation.

What I did not understand until more recently was that there is more to flower power than the social movement it symbolized.

Back when I started to use the appreciation break for myself, there was a beautiful public flowerbed a few blocks from my home. That, or my mental picture of it, is what I focused on in my appreciation breaks. Within seconds, my body and mind would relax.

What I subsequently discovered was that I got better results from the appreciation break by focusing on flowers, rather than on other things. Flowers seemed to have a special energy. On reflection, I realized that all my life I had found flowers uplifting and empowering.

I asked a few other people and they confirmed my experience. One friend has built a business around the power of flowers.

Perhaps I have just discovered what gardeners have known all along. Perhaps the flowers in the hippie movement half a century ago played much more than a symbolic role in the social change that ensued.

I invite you to be curious about how the multitude of blooms around you these days are affecting you.