Remembering Thankfulness

 

Now that the Thanksgiving holiday has passed, many of us are busily preparing for the Christmas season. Let's not leave Thanksgiving behind too fast.

Remember how it felt to spend a day feeling "thankful?" Maybe you had the same tradition as my family and at some point during the day, each person took a turn saying what they were thankful for. Your thankful thought might have been something right at hand, like the delicious turkey dinner, or it might have been something broader, such as my son's thankfulness for his new house.

Even if you did not say out loud what you were thankful for, it's likely that you spent at least part of Thanksgiving feeling ... thankful. It felt great, didn't it? It was kind of a warm glow when you thought about how grateful you were for something or someone that was in your life.

Large or small, how often do you focus on what you are truly thankful for? If if feels so good, why do we leave it behind so quickly? Have we been trained that we spend all our thanks on Thanksgiving and then get on with our lives? Probably not. What likely is happening is that we just get busy. We forget. We forget to be grateful.

Why not make it a practice to consciously find at least one thing everyday that you are thankful for? You might be amazed at what this does for your life. It first takes the focus off the negative and the things lacking and turns the focus toward the positive and the abundant. Then, as you continue to practice, you begin to notice patterns in things that make you feel happy or that bring you peace or joy.

As you continue to be consciously grateful, you begin to see the difference between the things that authentically bring you happiness and the things that were "supposed" to make you happy. You begin to realize that some things that you thought were essential for your happiness were just extra decoration and not that meaningful to you. Sometimes you begin to clearly see that some of the things in your life are there because someone else decided for you that those things (or activities, or people) should make you happy. With the practice of gratitude, you begin to see which choices are really right for you.

If you have felt an undefined restlessness or dissatisfaction that you can't quite define, try practicing gratitude and see what happens.

Being grateful on a daily basis can change you.

Article by Patti Tokar Canton

Further reading How to Start a Gratitude Journal