Do you remember the last time you heard a song on the radio and the rest of the day or week you just couldn’t get it out of your thoughts? The phrase “Gratitude is an Attitude” has been on my mind for the past several weeks.  It then began showing up in the strangest places around me like on the side of a bus and on a commercial on PBS and then the radio.  Then as I was teaching a class one of the students nearly jumped out of her seat spouting information about gratitude.  As I reflected to see where I could begin to help others shift and use gratitude in their lives.

I’ve had more than one life threatening situation occur in my life and for the past 11 years I open my eyes each morning thinking about how grateful I am for being.  I think about how grateful I am for so very many things permeating every situation.  The lessons I’ve learned have made me feel more grateful than I could express in words.  I have always loved the shower and yet I never felt gratitude for such a simple pleasure until I went trekking in Nepal where there were few showers and couldn’t take a shower for 10 days. Gratitude is such a part of my routine that the phrase “Gratitude is an Attitude” repeating in my mind made me wonder about how others use or don’t use gratitude in their lives.

A Gratitude Opportunity Every Day

Every day we have the opportunity to express our gratitude inward and outward, yet most people can be found in conversation sharing negativity. If we are to listen to those in conversation around us there are usually more complaints and whining than expressions of compliments and kindness.  Awareness about our own internal dialogue will reveal we focus on what we haven’t accomplished.

The volume of thoughts, images, and information that stream rapidly through our lives each day is tremendous.  Most of those thoughts are repetitive and self-defeating. If we listen to others and allow ourselves to echo their negativity we will become exhausted and feel beaten. Unless we are a hermit or recluse there are boundless opportunities for expressing our gratitude and if we begin to use it we will feel more relaxed and refreshed.  Our tolerance for others will increase and our ability to focus on the project at hand will become in focus and sharp and ideas and creativity will blossom.

The times we usually have no problem expressing gratitude are times of tragedy or extreme situations, when we should be spreading our thankfulness everywhere every day.  With the advances in all areas of the world, today we can get on a plane and be half way around the world in less than a day.  How amazing that we can communicate with the other side of the world by picking up the phone in a car or on top of a mountain.  Are we grateful for each of these often or are we complaining because they aren’t working right or at all?  We wouldn’t have known about the magnitude of devastation from September 11^th in New York were it not for technology advances and we wouldn’t have become so firmly united as a country so rapidly.

Don’t Confuse Gratitude with Indebtedness

Just because you are indebted to another for a service or something that they helped you with doesn’t necessarily mean that gratitude is in play.  We are not necessarily grateful for those who have been of service to us, our families, our businesses.  If we are not grateful then there will be resentment and negative pent up emotions tied to the event.  These will begin to fester taking root allowing all your thoughts and ideas to become muddy.

With many of my clients and student I take them trough an exercise on forgiveness and there are many that say they can’t.  After some prodding we do the exercise and there is always relief.  Gratitude is actually easier because you don’t need to get into the personality of another all you need to do to begin is say “I’m grateful for the air I breathe”.  Take a moment to reflect on the areas or times in your life that you didn’t express gratitude and use this moment to express gratitude toward that event. I’m certain that you will feel a big wave of relief and release.  In doing such an exercise you have allowed yourself to let go of the negative emotions and by allowing gratitude in you are actually allowing love into your life or the situation.  As we all know love heals all wounds.

Saying Thank You is Giving as Well as Receiving

It seems that there are more references in the spiritual community to the use of gratitude than any other community.  Weren’t we all taught to say “Thank you” and isn’t that a form of gratitude?  It doesn’t just have to be the spiritual community that practices gratitude, maybe they were the ones who needed to remind us of our need to be grateful. I believe we just took a detour and lost our way in the courtesy arena.  Life got busy and we got caught up in the frenzy and it’s time to give back through gratitude and thanks.

As I am so grateful for all areas of my life, even the challenges, I can’t help but express it to everyone.  It seems when I say “Thank you I am so grateful for your help” people look at me as if I’m alien.  Or they say “No no that’s ok” which negates the expression.  We not only need to begin to express our gratitude more often, it is also necessary that we don’t rain on someone else’s gratitude parade and we begin to accept it and say “Thank you” period.

Gratitude Journal

To write things down is to journal.  As I don’t spend much time watching TV I learned through my internet search that Oprah came up with the Gratitude Journal and yes this is a great idea.  Studies have shown that keeping a gratitude journal actually helps the person journaling to succeed more quickly, have more peace, give to others more freely, have better relationships, have empathy and more personal joy.  This makes sense in that as you give thanks for what you have you create the space to have more all the time.  Instead of allowing ourselves to dwell on the negative which becomes a hard habit to break, dwell on the gratitude you have for the small things.  The small things then lead to larger things you are grateful for and before you know it you’re thinking grateful thoughts constantly.

Powerful and Simple Forgotten Methods

My mother has no reason to send me a card or note except on special occasions, but to this day she sends a handwritten note to me expressing her thanks for even the smallest of things I do for her.  Jack Welsh, Ex CEO of General Electric once stated that he owed some of his success to giving thanks.  He told that every day he would spend an allotted amount of time sitting down and handwriting Thank You notes to his staff.  He felt that this was part of his personal success in building the team and the success of GE.

People are looking for praise and appreciation in even the smallest way and are lacking this in all areas of their lives.  Why not take some time and instead of writing an email buy some of those beautiful photograph image cards and send a thank you note to someone you’ve been thinking of.  While you’re at it send a thank you note to someone who has touched your life in a special way.  Remember the simplest things often bring the most amount of success and joy.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

–Melodie Beattie–

Gratitude is Growing

I went to the dictionary to see what Webster’s had to reveal about the word gratitude and it was disappointing to see it described in one phrase and a word such as hate given six lines.  Next I went to the internet and there were 197,000 sites listed that use the word gratitude.  This seemed encouraging in that the first several sites I opened were created by immigrants who were expressing their gratitude for living the U.S. Mind you these sites show their existence prior to September 11^th .  Then there were sites associated with Buddism, then books listed, and so on.  Having gone through a number of them the amount of people expressing gratitude in so many ways is promising.

Attitude is Positive not Negative

With the use of the word attitude some will think along the lines of attitude being a problem.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if the world had a “Gratitude is an Attitude” problem?  If we were to require that each child in high school travel abroad for a month I believe that we would see the level of gratitude rise and the level of complaining decrease. We would see more productive use of our physical and mental capacity for years to come.

Think about how the word gratitude is used in your life.  I challenge you to begin to look and listen to those around you.  Pay attention to the opportunity to where you will be able to infect another with gratitude.  Take it one step further and select 10 people in your life and try to get them to see where they can use gratitude.

We can take the road to a better life physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially by the use of “Gratitude is an Attitude”.  Or we could take the alternate path and see where that leads us.  The question is would you like to take the “Easy Road” or the “Long Hard Road”?  Live the “Gratitude is an Attitude” phrase and see how easily success comes to you.

Tags: attitude, gratitude