LEARNING TO BE GRATEFUL
COVID–19. Global Pandemic. Historic Outbreak. Coronavirus Disease. Quarantine. Rising Death Toll…It’s pretty hard to be optimistic, when you are hearing words like these being thrown around, as a part of our everyday life.
Fear, Death, Illness, Sadness, and Uncertainty, are almost everywhere we turn. It would be tough, to expect anyone to be grateful, throughout all this madness.
Yet, learning to be grateful, will greatly increase the quality of our daily life.
Research has shown that the practice of gratitude can enhance our overall wellbeing, and other studies have demonstrated, that people who practice gratitude are far more resilient in the face of trauma.
In other words, learning to be grateful, enhances the enjoyment of the good seasons of life, while providing strength to make it through the difficult seasons. Okay. But…What could I possibly, find to be grateful for during this crazy time of life? You might ask.
You can be grateful for the good moments you’ve experienced prior to this one. Or, you can be grateful for the fact that you are no longer still, in some of the bad moments, you’ve been in before. There is always something to be grateful for, we just have to seek it.
And since we are SEEKERS, that’s what we’ll do!
Here are three tips that I found, will help us in learning to be grateful. There are a lot more tips out here, but I found these three to be especially helpful to me.
My first is Tip #1.
It would bode us well not to look at being grateful as an emotion.
Being grateful is not just a feeling, but rather a mindset.
A mindset where we make a conscious choice to be appreciative and thankful for the things we have received in this life. Being grateful is a choice! The difference between viewing gratefulness, as a conscious choice as opposed to a feeling, is like the difference between a thermostat and a thermometer.
One TAKES the temperature, while the other SETS the temperature.
In making a conscious choice to be grateful, we can act like a thermostat and SET the temperature for our day. We get to choose our disposition. We set the climate. We set the mood. Our emotions are under our control. We get to provide some level of stability in our life.
Which is particularly important during these unstable times!
Conversely, if we see being grateful as an emotion, we then become the thermometer, and allow outside forces to direct our mood and temperament. Others can control us. We become subject to things like the media, the weather, and other people’s fears and perceptions. We are constantly in a state of flux, happy then sad, up and then down, as different things affect us, or even worse, we become depressed because we are always reacting to all the bad that is around us in our environment.
Why not choose to set the temperature for the day, by choosing to be grateful.
Which brings me to Tip #2.
We must learn to be grateful for the little things in life.
Much like the idiom that states, that one little single straw broke the camel’s back.
So too is one single brick vital to the foundation of the wall for a fortified city.
Our learning to be grateful for a small thing, can be a single brick in the foundation of our fortified city, of peace and hope for our daily life.
With that, let us be grateful for the little things in life, like good friends, the kindness of a stranger, the memory of a fun time, a joke that was funny to you, fresh air, good sleep when you get it, rest, warmth, laughter, sunshine, rain, love, a book you enjoy, a song that touches your heart, art, rainbows, sunrise, and waking up today, to name just a few.
“Little things”, doesn’t mean they are insignificant. But rather, they are the tiniest of detailed things that are personal just to YOU.
Gratefulness is personal. No one can tell you the detailed things that have happened in your life that you are grateful for. Only you, and God know the details of what he has done for you.
Which is the perfect segue for my last one, Tip #3.
Pray prayers of gratitude and appreciation.
Tell God thank you for all the detailed personal things he has done just for YOU. Scientist estimate there have been more than 108 Billion people who have walked this earth since its existence. Yes, I said 108 Billion with a “B”. That is a lot of folks.
God has given each one of us, many, many, many, detailed blessings for which we can be grateful for. All 108 Billion of us, were given, in each minute, each hour, each day, each year, each birthday, each event, each decade, each millennium, a detailed blessing.
I think it is great advice for US to let HIM know that we appreciate him.
As we pray grateful prayers daily, we will then begin to create an atmosphere of joy and peace for ourselves. We will build our fortified cities of peace and hope. We don’t choose to focus on what might or might not be, but instead we will choose to focus on what we are glad for that he has already done.
Our being grateful, will begat even more things to be grateful for.
Let’s do a 30-day grateful prayer challenge, and see it work. Please let me hear from you.
I’ll start us off with My Prayer;
Father God, thank you for the lives of all my seeker, brothers and sisters. We need you. Only you can be with us all over the world, wherever we are. Please help each one of us find the Truth! Amen.
This is a Thompson Truth.
Tune in every Monday morning each week to get the New Truth for the week.
