Wishing you all a very blessed and Happy Holiday Season.
Thanksgiving has traditionally been a celebration of counting our blessings.
How sad that such a lovely holiday has been bombarded with the discontentment of wanting more rather than giving thanks for our bounty. Each year black Friday ushers in the Christmas season earlier and earlier, clouding the focus of the day at hand. Why are we so easily swayed to enter into the frenzy associated holiday shopping?
There is much value in starting your day with an attitude of gratitude and nothing reminds me of this more than listening to all the commercials designed to make us want more and more and more. Commercials are designed to make us unhappy with what we have so we can justify replacing it with something new.
Starting each day with an attitude of gratitude causes us to count our blessings instead of everyone else’s. When we count other people’s blessings, we will always fall short because there will always be people out there with more than we have. When we count our own blessings, we find that we have much more to count than many other people and we can be grateful for what we do have rather than discontent about it.
Starting each day with an attitude of gratitude usually causes us to look around at our stuff with gratitude. It soon progresses to a deeper level as we begin to appreciate people and relationships more than things. From there it is easier to begin looking beyond people giving thanks for the beauty of nature.
Let us not forget to appreciate and give thanks for nature because everything we have stems from nature. Mother Earth provides us with all the basic raw materials for everything we have, including the food we eat, which fuels our bodies.
There is great wisdom in being grateful for all that the Earth provides because we couldn’t exist without air, water, or food even when we take these things for granted. When gratitude is taken down to the very basics of life, it’s difficult to continue treating the earth with disrespect of poisoning our soils, water, and air with toxic chemicals.
Each person who truly has gratitude for Earth’s bounty can’t help but make better personal choices that will collectively make a huge impact on the Earth.
I encourage you to begin each day with an attitude of gratitude and see how many levels deep you can go with your personal gratitude.
Cindy Haas