The Thanksgiving long weekend is upon us. Beyond the celebration of the harvest and all its attendant trimmings and promises of tryptophan-induced comas, take a moment to consider the things that you have around you instead of the things that you don’t have.
What Are You Grateful For?
Amongst the hallmark tokens of the season, lies a fundamental human emotion: gratitude. Food, family and friends is heightened not so much by the prospect of a 3-day weekend, as by the opportunity for feelings of thankfulness, appreciation, and gratefulness. Take a moment to think and ask: “what am I grateful for?” Focus on the positive. Be positive for what you do have.
The Study of Gratitude
Back in the day a guy named Cicero who lived in Rome between 106 – 43 BC said that, “gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues but the parent of all others”. Seems like he was onto something. More recently science has focused on positive psychology, the systematic study of gratitude. The research and empirical evidence is pretty profound. A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of subjective well-being. Additionally, grateful people experience higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purposefulness, and self-acceptance.
Helping People Financially
Everyday, as a mortgage broker, one of the things that motivates me is to to help people financially. And a big part of this comes from the inspiration I get from Lynne Twist, author of The Soul Of Money. Among many concepts, she introduced me to a new way of understanding appreciation. One of my favourite quotations from Twist is: “If you let go of trying to attain more of what you don’t really need it frees up oceans of energy to pay attention to and make a difference with what you already have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands. Another way of saying that is: what you appreciate appreciates.”
On this Friday before our Thanksgiving long weekend, what message could be better to share with you? Between bites of the bountiful feast, take a moment to consider the things that you have around you instead of the things that you don’t have. It’s an amazing exercise that reveals how fortunate we are and how wonderful the experience of living can be. That’s a pretty good return on being grateful, I’d say.
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