Gratitude

Think of 3 things you are grateful for each day.

I went for an early morning walk in the woods today, there was hardly anyone around and everything was covered in glittering frost, the sun was shining and I was struck by an overwhelming sense of how lucky I was to be in such a beautiful place.  I stopped for a while and listened to the birdsong and the breeze through the trees and there was a feeling of total connection with my surroundings.  This got me thinking about the other things in my life that I am grateful for and the very first one that came to mind was water.  I live in the south of England in a house with my husband and 4 dogs and all I need to do to make a drink or bathe is turn a tap and water comes out, cold for drinking, hot for bathing and every day I take this for granted with hardly a thought for the millions of people across the world who for whatever reason don’t have this luxury.

In our busy Western lives we often get bogged down by life and forget the things that are really important, how many times have you spent hours or indeed days ruminating over a disagreement with someone; playing out all the scenarios in your head, what you should have said, what they actually said and so on.  At the end of this process you feel tired, you probably have a headache and things have built up to such a point in your head that you are consumed by them.  If at any point during this process you had stopped and felt gratitude for the things in life that you have, some of which you take for granted the whole disagreement would have become a distant memory.

Things I have recently felt gratitude for personally are the aforesaid water, I really feel this is partly down to watching news reports of Aleppo and feeling so sorry for the suffering of the ordinary people caught up in that atrocity.  I am grateful for a roof over my head and the ability to put food on the table along with enough money to make sure the food is mostly ethically farmed and sourced, I am grateful for my children and grandchild and for my husband who has taught me to be the best version of myself that I am able to be.  Of course sometimes those we love upset us, but we can still feel gratitude for them even if it is just for teaching us something about ourselves.

When you wake up each morning try and think of 3 new things that you feel grateful for and try to be present for each of those things mulling over past hurts only hurts the thinker the incident is gone and cannot be altered so take what lessons from it you can and move into the present.