Thursday, September 27, 2012

What does it take to be thankful?


What are you thankful for?  Or maybe a better question: Are you thankful for the things that you should be?  I recently read 365 Thank Yous: The Year a Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life by John Kralik.  Everything that could go wrong for this guy, did go wrong.  His life was a mess.  He was lonely.  He was practically bankrupt.  But in a life-changing moment, he realized that he truly did have so much to be thankful for.  Ain’t that always the way?? We complain about our lives before we realize… We are so blessed.  So John decided to write a thank you note every day. For a YEAR.  That is a heck of a lot of thank you notes.  Can you think of 365 things to be thankful for?  I betcha can’t!  But really--- most of us have a multitude of things we should be thankful for.
 

This book has taught me to really appreciate the little things people do and to simply say THANK YOU.  To realize that I have so much that I have been blessed with and I better quit all that whining.  A friend of mine said in a talk at church:  “Perspective: looking at what God has given you, not what God has taken away.”  What a concept.  I used to think that this way of looking at things was slightly naïve and pointless.  But I have changed my mind.  We can’t change our situations BUT our perspective changes the way we react to them. So, what do you think…Is this glass half-full or half-empty?

1 comment:

  1. I always try to remember to look at the glass half full and even on bad days, I remind myself of all of the things I have to be thankful for. We are truly blessed individuals if we take even two minutes to sit and think about all that we have!

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