Reflecting on Gratitude

I received some great feedback on last week’s blog on the subject of “Attitude of Gratitude”. Some of my readers were particularly pleased and impressed with the great feeling they got when they went out of their way, as I suggested, to express their gratitude to several people in one day—to random friends, relatives and even strangers.

This morning as I was thinking about what I wanted to write about for this week’s blog and that ” Attitude of Gratitude ” kind of hit me in the face with the thought of a very simple thing that happened a few minutes before. It was just me, turning on the faucet to brush my teeth and, strangely, nothing came out.  It turned out that our water had been cut off by the city, without announcement, to work on some pipe problems. Oh, poor, picked-on me … there was no water so I couldn’t brush my teeth.  Then later, when I sat down to write this post, I couldn’t help but think how many things we take totally for granted, especially us Americans and others who live in highly developed and wealthy countries. That stopped me in my tracks and pushed my thinking to all the wonderful things in my life that I am, and should be, very grateful for. I began immediately to strengthen my resolve to improve my “Attitude of Gratitude”.

Then I found myself thinking about all those people affected by the devastation of hurricane Harvey. That was bad enough but now we are all concerned about what the effect of hurricane Irma, on its way to Florida, will have on the people and places in its path when it hits the US.  It has already devastated a number of Atlantic islands. That’s not good stuff, but these kinds of natural disasters can, and should, push our minds to be grateful for what we do have right now, who we are, what we can do, and what we can become in this great country and world of ours.

We all need to pause and think about our “Attitude of Gratitude” and, like I challenged my readers to do last week, go out of your way in the next few days to express your appreciation and gratitude to those around you. Then be sure to take time to observe and reflect on how expressing your gratitude made those people feel as well as how it made you feel. If you really want to have a great day do it five or ten times and feel that great feeling over and over!