Category Archives for gratitude

Gratitude and the Great Life

Happiness and gratitude truly complement each other. Increase one and the other automatically increases too!

Nice, the way that works.

What a magnificent day I enjoyed today. I spent time with new friends, was offered a massage and invited to join a group of people I have long wondered about.

Ah…that is just the beginning.

My friend is a musician. I know lots of musicians, being one myself. This friend, Johnny Downing, is a musician of musicians and an electronics genius too. He created an organ in his home that plays the sounds of a full cathedral-sized organ.

He demonstrated his extraordinary instruments and effects for me and another friend. Truly I was blown away. It takes something mighty remarkable to impress me! Of course Johnny was not trying to impress me, He was simply sharing his passion with some people who appreciated his gift.

So tonight I learned that these two friends, like me, have always heard music in their heads. You know I was sixteen before I learned that not everyone hears music in their heads all the time! Imagine that!

We always think everybody experiences life the same way we do, don’t we?

I left the party early to come home. Tonight is a special night, here in the USA. Today we celebrate our independence, our freedom.

For me, I feel deep gratitude to be an American. As my friend, best selling author, Robert G. Allen says, “We won the lottery just because we live where we do.” Every day I thank the Universe for gifting me this most amazing life in the northwest United States.

I sat in my back yard and on my deck and watched more than three hours of fireworks spanning all across the horizon. I have no clue how many towns’ fireworks I got to enjoy without ever leaving the comfort of home. Most of the displays were too far away to hear the sound. So I basically got to witness a seemingly endless light show!

But it was more than that. As I sat there, right under the Big Dipper, I felt so humble and so small and so much one with the Universe.

I live far enough out in the country that the sky was filled with stars and planets. I felt like I was in planetarium. So many heavenly bodies twinkled all around me.

I recalled as a little kid trying to figure out which start twinkled first. I assumed they were sending messages in a morse code of some sort.

I notice that the better I feel and the more I appreciate who I already am, what I already do, and what I already have, the more smoothly life flows in the direction of my dreams.

Can you feel the peace?

Gratitude Involves Recognizing Value

When people express gratitude they honor the value they perceive and receive from some happening or person. The more value you perceive in the world, the more you feel you have to be thankful for. And the more things for which you give thanks, the more things you will receive and experience for which to be thankful.
What do I mean by recognizing value? Every day I thank the Universe for bringing certain people into my world. Yes, of course I constantly tell them I am grateful for their being who they are and brightening my world. And I am, in general, grateful for knowing them.
Every night before falling asleep I review all the thing and people for which I am grateful that day. And the same people, whether or not I see them that day, receive my gratitude because of what I learn by knowing them—and apply in my daily living because of knowing them.
What I learn from them allows my world to grow brighter and lighter every day. Those friends are priceless gifts to me. They serve as role models for me. I could not find and pay people to do what these people do for me—and were it not for my telling them that fact, they would not even know the impact they have on my life

Happiness Brings More Fun and Surprises

Lately I have been attracting more and more fun to my life. Even when thing happen that I wish hadn’t–like business errors –I find myself laughing out loud instead of freaking out. Consequently, the Universe has continuially provided me with more and more reasons to feel happy.

Yup, lots of nice fun surprises keep coming into my world.  I express gratitude for every little and big thing.

Nice, the way that works.

Gratitude – Gifts Come In All Kinds of Packages

It just happened, that is all. I was re-writing my book on adolescent self esteem and something odd happened when I did the last save before going to sleep. Instead of taking a good look at the odd event, I overlooked it as something beyond my understanding. In that moment, I lost my entire manuscript. More than a week of writing all gone because I didn’t investigate an oddity…or back up my work some place other than on my computer.

I sought assistance from the Apple technician at the local Apple store. She broke the bad news. The document was nowhere to be found on my computer. The technician pointed to a woman who was in the store who—are you sitting down?—lost her entire doctoral dissertation. She wrote it in just one place on her computer and never backed it up some place safe.

Well, that is one lesson I will refrain from repeating. I knew getting upset and angry with myself would just waste my energy. So I figured, even though my re-write was superb, the next one would be even better—and it was.

Since I was writing on the computer, I had no notes to assist my re-write. I pulled the new content from a different place in my brain, and heart, than the first pages. Going with the flow, knowing there are no accidents, no such thing as bad luck, I just sat down and tackled the task afresh.

Everything happens for a beautiful and divine reason. When I suffered a brain injury back in 1996, I could not use my eyes, could not hold a pen to write—I could not even construct a sentence and remember it long enough to record it.

I felt deep gratitude for regaining the ability to write the book. I felt thankful I could write. Period.