What’s On Your Gratitude List?

I wrote a short post a few days ago, “Choosing to See the Extraordinary in the Ordinary”, and today felt compelled to expand upon it just a bit by discussing a great tool, a personal gratitude list, that we can use to counter our ego’s tendency toward C-sickness.   When finding myself caught up in any one or more of the C’s, I have found that reflecting on my gratitude list is immensely helpful in getting to a more positive frame of mind. 

 

The truth is we really do have so much to be grateful for, such as the simple things that we hardly notice in the everyday press of life.  What a shame that we sometimes don’t see these everyday things and truly appreciate the immensity with which we’ve been blessed.  Things as basic in our society as our homes, clothes, and food to eat, that so much of the world goes without and we take for granted.  The truth is, most of us, even of modest means, live better than kings and queens not too many decades ago and yet we don’t even realize it.

 

What a powerful exercise it is to take time occasionally to write down or revisit a personal gratitude list that notes everything, however simple, that we are truly grateful for.  My own list brings me such joy and peace when I focus on it rather than the more often trivial challenges my ego is fixed on in my life.  If you do this one thing, creating and focusing just a few minutes daily on your own personal gratitude list, I’m confident it will be near impossible not to have a more positive attitude on life.  Struggling a bit on what to write down on your list, well how about some of the following from a never ending universal gratitude list, available to us all? 

 

• The sun shining its light and warmth, asking nothing in return
• The chance to take a peaceful walk wherever we find our self
• The chance to be truly present with life’s continuous moments, feeling our senses in action
• The chance to see the wondrous manifestations of life all around us
• The chance to smell and taste all the wonderful foods we are lucky to have available
• The chance to breath with awareness and really appreciate this wonderful, if brief, opportunity at life we have

 

Aren’t these simply amazing?  Now, what’s on your gratitude list?