Gratitude

“I am grateful for _______!”

This is an exciting week in the United States as we approach our Thanksgiving Holiday.  How can you not love a holiday where the theme is giving thanks.  All year we rush through our lives and don’t slow down to appreciate and be grateful for what we have.  Your entire experience in life changes as you realize all the great parts of your life.

The quality of your life is based on your perceptional experience.  If you look at the world from your have not’s you don’t see what you have.  These days with economic pressures, it is easy to get into a negative mindset.  It is more important than ever to realize what you are blessed with. 

Changing your vantage point on the world from what you do not have or what is wrong to one of appreciation changes not only your experience but it also changes your ability to empower yourself to create positive changes in your life.  When you see the negative you have no belief that things can get better.  If you do not believe things can get better then why invest in your career, look for a better job, go out on that date, or other?

It is the easiest thing in the world to be negative.  You get plenty of company as people love to gather and complain together.  Being negative takes your energy away. It does not require any action. If things are negative then there is no reason to try and change them.  You get to indulge in your negative outlook like taking drugs. It makes you lazy and not involved with making a positive difference in your life or the world around you.

Stop taking negative pills. Wake up and look around.  You have so much to be grateful for each day.  To start with, you have another day; the most precious commodity you can ever have is time.  You can use that time to appreciate and enjoy your friends and family, to improve your body, your career, to enjoy your life.  To simply appreciate the beauty around you in the sky. To stop and smell the flowers.  Life is waiting for you to enjoy and appreciate each day.

This week as we approach Thanksgiving, use the metaphor of the holiday to work on your mindset.  Start your day with a grateful list and develop a routine around living in gratitude.  Every time you have a negative thought talk back to it by finding things to be grateful for.  Make a game out of it see how many things you can be grateful for.  It really is amazing when you start you will find you cannot stop.  I’ll give you an examples; how about running water?  To have running water and inside plumbing, wow, isn’t that cool? How about the garbage collectors, aren’t you grateful they pick up the garbage?

The list is endless from a toothbrush, food, the ability to smile, it is endless.  If you really think about all the things you can be grateful for they will outweigh your negative outlook every time.  One of the most important things you can be grateful each day is the fact that if you choose you can make your life better every day with what you do.  You will not use that ability if you have a negative outlook. So become thankful as we approach Thanksgiving. Decide that every day is a day to be thankful for.

I am thankful for you.

Devlyn Steele

The Tools Staff and I want to wish you all a wonderful holiday if you are celebrating, and even if you are not, we wish you a life of feeling thankful.  All week we will share Inspirations in writing and on the Daily Podcast.