In this time of Thanksgiving in America, we are reminded to be thankful. A lot of authors and speakers say that gratitude is the best emotion to feel. Gratitude is a little different than thankfulness in that thankfulness has us looking outside, whereas gratitude is felt within us — it resonates through us. Gratitude is our secret weapon for creating a feeling of well-being. Also, whatever we feel gratitude for we will get more of.
I hope there is a lot you are grateful for. I am grateful for the big as well as the small things. Sometimes, when I’m grumpy, it feels hard to be grateful, but if I shift my attention to focus on the good (which helps me and everyone around me), I can find things to be grateful for in almost every moment.
I think a lot of us are trained to look for what’s wrong and even our brain is set up to help us survive, so we look for “danger”/problems to avoid! This is old programming that doesn’t serve us anymore. Most of us are not in real danger today. We can choose more and more to notice something different and change our patterns and habits to be more positive.
We can also choose what we allow into our mind; what we read, what we watch, who we hang out with, etc. Filling our mind with positive things helps keep us out of negative thinking.
I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and hope we can all be more grateful as we go into the end of this year and move into 2014!
With gratitude,
Allison