I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude recently and while I was making the video below, I remembered a blog post I had written for Huffington Post many years ago about the same subject.
Everything in this extract about gratitude is still as relevant and important today as it was then, so I thought I’d share both of them with you here.
“When we give thanks for what we have, we recognize all the blessings that we are receiving; we put our attention and focus on to what we have. We move forward in our lives with gratitude, one step at a time, living our lives as they are meant to be lived. When we live our life in gratitude we focus on doors that are open, and doors that may have seemed to be closed often open up.
When we put the focus on what we lack, we get anxious and worried about it. We fail to move forward, we tend to get fixated with trying to open door that are not open for us at that time and when we do this we get into a cycle of stress, feeling we never will get what we want, a feeling that stops us from noticing, let alone appreciating, the joys that are already in our lives.
Every time we say a heartfelt thanks to God — or to another person — our joy and blessings are increased. But the angels tell me that it is not just our joy and blessings that are increased with gratitude. They tell me that when we shed a tear of gratitude for what we have blessings burst forth from our tears, blessings for others less fortunate than us.
Gratitude is in fact a prayer — a prayer that blesses not just you, but everyone in the world.”