The Joy Of Gratitude

The Joy Of Gratitude
By Annie Tornabene


Every day is a good day...it can be depending on the way you look at it. With the joy of gratitude, I experience good days with what use to be "bad days"... days full of frustration, despair, disappointments and discouragement. I call those days an "unbelievable" day. This habit keeps me from being overwhelmed with stinking thinking and emotions. Why does this work?

Repetitious thoughts and words create feelings ... positive or negative behavioral patterns and increased thinking of those feelings. If I dwell on stinking thing, I feel the gloom and doom; thus increasing my level of depression and I end up moping around. If I tell myself it's an "unbelievable" day this keeps my mind open to possibilities, gratitude, hope, solutions, resilience, and even laughter. The buoyancy creates joy within me.

So if you are having an unbelievable day like the kids are screaming, you are ready to kiss your boss goodbye, the financial crisis just won't go away or you are crawling in traffic at a snails pace; just take a deep breath and reorganize your thoughts. If you are in the car don't take time to mediate, wait until you are in a safe spot to take a 2 minute meditation. If you are at a safe place, then take a few minutes to mediate and get back on track. If you can't find a place where you can be alone with your thoughts, slip away into the bathroom with the doors locked. A few minutes spent in quiet mediation refreshes you and allow you time to create a more positive feeling within yourself and that you can display to the world. Believe me it helps. You feel stronger and more confident. I think there were days that I could have killed someone without those quiet times. Breathe in peace, hope and tranquility. Allow the joy of gratitude to flow through you and around you.

I don't know all the answers...I do know that it is worth it. In an attitude of gratitude, count your blessings. Never give up. You can make it. Miracles happen every day...we just have to focus on them...look for them. Focus on health, wealth, good friends and family, and anything that you feel make life worth living for. While these blessings are temporary, they do get you in the habit of thinking in an attitude of gratitude.

Having tested this for myself extensively, I found there was an effective way to practice gratitude and an ineffective way. There is a deeper understanding of gratitude and a more effective way to practice it, one that yielded much greater the joy of gratitude.

Genuine gratitude isn’t my feeling because let's face it; my circumstances may not be that exciting. More often than not, it's complicated and it leaves me feeling empty or complacent. This gratitude may be the catalyst for a major attitude change or temporary relief that I need. You can enjoy this state of gratitude temporarily, but overall you’ll remain stuck in your old habits of stinking thinking.

Genuine gratitude is independent of situations and circumstances. The joy of gratitude is a feeling of gratitude for life itself, for our existence, for anything and everything we experience. It is more of an underlying attitude... it becomes part of who we are. It is a sense of charisma or enchantment with the journey of life no matter what the outcome. It is looking at life through the eyes of a child. It is no fear of loss and an enjoyment of the journey of our life, the universe, time and space, our obstacles, trials, and tribulations, our imperfections and bloopers, our realizations, our psyche, our inner child, the difficult people in our lives, our thoughts and angers and happiness, our rights, responsibilities, ideas and concepts, and even the fog.

Gratitude becomes the canvas upon which we paint our life. It doesn’t matter how it looks because we enjoy the experience of painting. We say wow to life.

If we can remain in that state of wonder of a child, we’re likely to find the joy of gratitude...the enjoyment of life. Together we can make a difference in living beyond anger, fear and depression and living our best life now. We will feel the joy of gratitude that resonates with who we are.