Create Your Day with Gratitude

Create your day everyday with the number one thing you must do – feel gratitude.

Change

Of all the things we can do to change others, it all begins with changing ourselves. While the reasoning behind gratitude goes beyond motivation and inspiration, just doing it begins our trek to creating our best day. I have always said I may not know how electricity works but I know how to turn the lights off and on. I don’t know how this works either, but it sure turns the light on in my life.

Proverbs 16:9 A man’s heart deviseth his way: But the LORD directeth his steps. King James Version (KJV)

Our thoughts lead to words which lead to actions. Clean your slate and start with anything you can place into a space of gratitude. Think especially on events, people, or moments in your life that were especially meaningful. For the event, people or moments remind yourself how you felt at peace or felt serenity at that point in time. Be grateful for it and it will absolutely redirect every minute of your day.

Practice

Can you identify 50 events in your life where you had a moment of feeling at peace? It seems they are never thunderous, earth shaking events. I remember standing next to my dad as he talked about the land around our home. He said we were so lucky to have such beauty around us. It was a momentary reflection that lasted decades in my heart. That moment helped me identify him as someone not so enthralled with the material side of life but the beauty of nature and our fortunate place in it’s midst.

Over the next year take the time every day to remember the smallest of moments and fill your mind with all the goodness you can so you can replace some of the darkness that resides in us all. The secret ingredient to this feeling of gratitude is that it is an energy. Since energy can’t be destroyed, only changed, it attaches itself to the people we come in contact with every day. It attaches itself to to us.

Energy

If we begin our day with anger and frustration, that energy will attach itself to us and those around us.

Replace those emotions with the positive energy of gratitude and see where it leads you. I know how worry and frustration are easier to take up space in our thinking. Replacing it is not easy.

I once read about a mother sitting with her terminally ill child. Daily she gave thanks to God for her daughter and prayed for her healing. The child was dying anyway. I can’t think of anything more painful than to lose a child but this mother maintained her bond of love and continued to be vigilant in sharing her love and faith with her daughter. We will lose people we love along this journey. Our grief can be eased with being grateful for every moment we spend with them, acknowledging their place in our hearts.

Start with gratitude. Replace anger and frustration with understanding. Appreciate every gift of life. Our plans fall into more of God’s will rather than our own when we begin our actions with the light of gratitude. And if it is God’s will, it is good.