Thanksgiving

c. freebies.about.com

“It's not happy people who are thankful -It's thankful people who are happy.”  Unknown

So many people go through lives doing the reverse. I know I did. I’ve written about thankfulness before, but it’s definitely worth repeating.

Going through life with a grateful attitude changes your perspective. It doesn’t mean you won’t still get cranky, but it will definitely soothe your ruffled feathers.

I am feeling very grateful this Thanksgiving. I actually have been thankful well before it. I have so many blessings. For anything that might be going wrong in my day, I have 10 more serendipitous things to counterbalance it.

Even though I know I am extremely blessed, dark clouds will sometimes appear, taking my focus off of my blessings. It did today, I allowed myself to be distracted by the things that make work, well, work.

Mary Chapin Carpenter says it well; “I don't want to get mad at the elderly driver in front of me. I don't want to go crazy when my Internet access is messed up. I don't want to be jealous of someone else's success. You could say that this litany of sins indicates that I don't want to be human. The learning curve of gratitude, however, is showing me exactly how human I am.”

But gratitude is a matter of focus…and it takes work. It’s much easier to focus on our annoyances than our blessings. Especially in this day and age in America. We have so much available, that blessings turn into entitlements, and we often don’t realize that we’re grateful, until we don’t have them. And then we’re mad because we don’t have what’s “due us.”

Gratitude has a way of repowering and regenerating. It will fuel you to do amazing things. It’s an act of focus. It’s a decision to make, every moment and I often forget.

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.” John Milton

c.2012