Gratitude and Thanksgiving

I believe it is important because it touches upon the fundamental core belief that when you show and feel appreciation you feel more deserving of what you get and you end up receiving more joy in the process.

In the book and movie “The Secret” we are reminded that one of the most important ways we can go about changing our life – starting that process of change – is to think about and consider all of the things we are thankful for. The feeling and emotion of gratitude/thanksgiving is a very high and powerful vibration that once we link into, we begin to raise our own vibration and thus attract more goodness into our life.

There’s more to gratitude and thanksgiving than just being thankful for the good things in life. We also must find it within ourselves to be thankful for the bad things. We must find it within ourselves to see something good in everything, no matter how dark it may originally feel or seem. When we understand that a big part of this life is learning the life lessons that are involved in it, we can make great strides toward becoming a better human being in general.

We can find a good example of this by thinking back to our childhoods.

How many times did we get in trouble as a child, get punished, and think it was the worst day of our lives? As adults looking back, are there times/things that we see now that we didn’t back then, that makes us thankful that our parents acted as parents? I’m sure for the majority of us this is true.

This is the lesson we apply to our lives even today when it seems God/The Universe isn’t on our side because we didn’t get what we wanted. Did we ever stop to think that perhaps there was a bigger/greater reason that what we wanted to happen didn’t happen? Did we ever say thank you for not giving me what I wanted when I wanted it? Did we ever acknowledge that certain things probably wouldn’t have happened if life would have been different? These are all important questions to ask ourselves and important things to think about.

Louis Armstrong talks about how wonderful this world is. Unfortunately, it seems that more and more people are looking at the world and saying how horrible and terrible it is. Do we even understand what that type of energy does to the world? Maybe it’s not the energy of the world that makes us feel the world is so horrible? Maybe it’s the fact that we think over and over how terrible and bad the world is and this thinking is creating a world that to many appear to be horrible?

I encourage everyone to listen to this song with an open heart and mind. To see the world for what it is and what it is capable of being… beautiful. That small, yet simple, change in perception can do so much to alter your energy and the energy of the world itself. God didn’t create a horrible or evil world. God didn’t create evil people. God created everything in His image, and that can only ever be beautiful. Sure, we can deceive ourselves and others into believing otherwise, but that’s all it would be… an illusion. Stop getting lost in illusions and start being thankful for all that life has to offer… it may surprise you.

Many people in the past have done the 30-day thanksgiving challenge. This was a challenge to every day, for 30 days in November, list what you were thankful for each day. A similar challenge is the 100 days of gratitude challenge, which involvs a person posting once every day something they are grateful for. This is done for 100 days. I applaud each and every person who has taken part in either these challenges.

Yet I also challenge them and everyone else. Why does it have to be just one month, the month of November, that we take the time to think of one thing (or several) that we are thankful for each day? Why just 100 days? Could we and should we not do this every day for the rest of our lives? We obviously don’t have to make a public display of it, but if we would end each night by closing our eyes and thinking back over the day of those things which we are especially grateful and thankful for… how much of a difference would that make not only in our lives, but the world?

I close this post with a prayer titled Help Me Thanksgiving Day Prayer by Samuel F. Pugh

O God, when I have food,
help me to remember the hungry;
When I have work,
help me to remember the jobless;
When I have a home,
help me to remember those who have no home at all;
When I am without pain,
help me to remember those who suffer,
And remembering,
help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion,
and be concerned enough to help;
By word and deed,
those who cry out for what we take for granted.
Amen.