Written by Linda Austin
Clarksville, TN – There’s something about Thanksgiving that feels sacred. Sure, you can make turkey, stuffing, and that one delicious pie recipe only once a year, but underneath all the feasts and football is something deeper. Thanksgiving is more than just a day on the calendar. It’s a mindset, a daily spiritual practice.
What if you could tap into that delicious feeling of “Thanksgiving” every single day? Especially on the random Mondays in October, when the only thing cooking is stress, and your coffee’s gone cold, along with any ideas for solving any problems in your life. Cultivating a daily attitude of gratitude is a moment-by-moment choice to create a more fulfilling life. Gratitude has the power to transform your life in ways you’d never expect.
Gratitude is simple to do and becomes more powerful when done consistently. It’s a spiritual practice, one that shifts your perspective from what’s missing in your life to what’s already here. When you start looking at the world through that lens, life changes, and your heart and life feel more abundant, kind of like your abundantly full belly after Thanksgiving dinner.
Consider how a farmer plants seeds in the spring and tends to them all summer long, hoping for a good harvest. But no matter how much work he puts in, he can’t control the weather, the rain, or the wild turkeys and other woodland creatures nearby that designate his field as their favorite local snack shop.
He can only control his effort and his “Attitude”. Gratitude is like the farmer’s faith. It’s choosing to be thankful for the rain when it comes, and thankful for the lessons in patience when it doesn’t. In the same way, life doesn’t always go according to our plans. But when we learn to approach every situation—good, bad, and the ugly with a heart of gratitude, we start to see life’s challenges less like obstacles and more like opportunities.
Gratitude brings peace in uncertainty, joy in the mundane. Gratitude with a bit of humor helps us face all the chaos that life dishes up to us unexpectedly, sometimes like a Thanksgiving feast. So WHY make gratitude a daily ritual? Most of our days are pretty routine, and life isn’t going to remind you to think about feeling grateful like it’s a holiday, except once a year, … You’re responsible for intentionally choosing to be thankful all the rest of the year, ’til it’s an automatic way of thinking, like building a muscle.
The benefits are incredible, and you’ll have a constant feeling of ‘my cup over floweth-mucheth’ vibe to your life. Gratitude is so good for your health – fewer headaches, lower blood pressure, better sleep, losing weight with ease, and even better sex. Everybody enjoys being with an enthusiastic, grateful lover.
There are overwhelming amounts of research that show people who practice gratitude regularly experience better physical and mental well-being. They’re less likely to freak out like an entitled drama queen because every day isn’t sparkly rainbows and cupcake-scented unicorn farts.
Resilience is a highly valued character trait, but it’s something that is developed through practice. No one is born with it. Gracious people are more likely to see the silver lining in a storm cloud, and some even feel so empowered by gratitude that they take on the attitude, ‘I am the storm!’ because they’re gratefully aware of all the blessings they were born with.
Most importantly, gratitude has the most profound effects on your spirit. It’s the ‘secret sauce’ that makes you feel completely connected to God, the Universe, and the Oneness of all of existence. When you’re focused on all the ways you’re blessed and feeling thankful, you don’t notice all the minor inconveniences in life, and you can handle the worst days and greatest challenges. And all of us will be challenged to our knees at some point.
A few ways to get started are: Speak it out loud, even if you’re alone, it puts you in a good mood, quickly, ‘Dear LORD! Thank you for this wave of green lights because I’m running late!’ Keep a daily gratitude journal and make a list, even if it’s just one thing, like being grateful for getting out of bed.
The list will grow as your habit grows because you’ll start looking for things to be grateful for. In the messiest moments, take a long pause and make an extra effort to look for something to be grateful for. It’ll help comfort you better than a drink or a pill, and you’ll feel more in control.
Gratitude, at its core, is about seeing the sacred in the ordinary. It only requires a little effort, with an open heart and a willingness to look for the good in everyone and everything.
So, this year, let’s make Thanksgiving more than just one day. Let’s choose to create a feast of Thanksgiving in our minds and hearts. We change the world by first changing our attitude, which changes us for the better, a little bit every day.
Oh, and lastly, without our dedicated readers, we wouldn’t be here and I’m so deeply grateful, THANK YOU!!! Alexa, Play “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton.
