Show Gratitude Daily

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."

-   Oprah Winfrey

It’s so easy to take things for granted.  You go all day enjoying things like indoor plumbing and lights but never really pause to be grateful you aren’t carrying buckets up from the river and squinting over candle light.   Gratitude and appreciation are very powerful aspects of the psyche that can stimulate a great many reward centers in the brain.  The act of giving thanks and being grateful helps a person to stay grounded and emotionally balanced.

One of the best ways to cultivate this in your daily life is to keep a journal of gratitude.  Oprah Winfrey, quoted above, has maintained a nightly ritual of writing down the things for which she was grateful for over thirty years and attributes much of her success to this habitual practice.  The basis of prayer and spiritual communion is an attitude of gratefulness towards all the forces of life that are bigger than you.

Gratitude reminds you of all the good things going for you and helps to put your troubles into a larger perspective where they don’t seem so unmanageable.  It involves a humbling of yourself before the forces of nature and the heavens that have giving you life and breath and warmth despite all your silly behavior as a creature.

Give thanks that you made it.  Addiction claims so many lives prematurely that it’s a great wonder to be among the living and breathing.  So much of the world is at war and submerged in violence so having a safe home with heat and water and food is a great blessing.  Every person in your life is a blessing and should be treated with gratitude as well.

Cultivate an attitude that is always on top of the world, grateful for everything you have and then you’ll be poised to receive more.