Today is Thanksgiving Day. It is a day set aside to be thankful for our blessings. According to history, this was started by some early settlers in Massachusetts to celebrate a great harvest and blessings in spite of the hardships of coming to the “new world”. Today this holiday is full of football games and over-eating. We should stop and think for a few minutes about being thankful for many great people and things.
All of the great religions teach gratitude as an important part of our spiritual welfare. Being grateful to God is of highest importance, and being thankful also has mental and emotional benefits. Our self esteem or self worth is extremely important for sound health. How we feel about others is reflected in how we feel about ourselves. When we have good self esteem we will naturally see more worth in other people and we will be more grateful to others, just for being or for what they do for us.
In my new book, I teach people three steps to success. Those steps are: clearing the old outdated memories, clarifying your goal, and thinking correctly from the future as if it is already done. That third step requires gratitude. Someone who has be using the book and going through the steps, said to me, “Everyone is nicer to me now.” She was so grateful. Her gratitude caused her to emit a nicer vibrational energy and therefore, others are nicer to her.
It is important that we appreciate our family, even though we may not like some of them and we always get into a fight over Thanksgiving Dinner. That relative that we do not care for is here to teach us some kind of lesson. As soon as we learn the lesson, then they will move away or become nicer and we do not have to fight any more. What really happens is that we change and they simply were following along.
We must be thankful for our work. Work is an amazingly beneficial activity. It increases our self-worth, because we can look back and see what we have accomplished for the day and feel good (most of the time). We must be thankful for the men and women who produce the businesses that provide everything that we use in our daily lives. These producers provide services and jobs, so we can eat and care for ourselves and our children. These business people are grateful for the consumers who buy their goods and services. For the unemployed, it is a difficult time. But this is also a time to be grateful for the assistance from others in our community and in our churches.
Last week I had a man in my office who was complaining that President Obama was a socialist. I laughed out loud (lol). I knew he was on Social Security disability, Medicare and Medicaid. His defensive comment was that he had been injured and “could not help it if he could not work”. He finally understood that he should be thankful for the social programs and socialist Presidents who have started these programs for people who temporarily need help. In spite of lots of complaining about our government and the country, we still live in the best place in the world. Be thankful you live in America.
It really does not matter what our situation is, we can be grateful about many things. We just need to look at things in a different way. I would like to challenge everyone who reads this to stop for a few minutes, and think of at least five things for which you are thankful. Write them down and tape them to your May 2016 calendar. Then after six months, sit down with your list for a few minutes and see what has happened to the items on your list. You will see that many good things have happened in those areas of gratitude. The Attitude of Gratitude is a powerful tool that will help us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically and financially.
Let me know what happens next spring.
Put Your Health in Your Own Hands.
Put Your Health in Your Own Hands 