Well, it's Thanksgiving and we are all consciously thinking of things for which we are grateful! Or not! Many of us are caught up in the stress of having to cook for 30 people, travel, greet family members we don’t like, and eat enough to feed a small nation! There will be a gazillion things written in the next week on the spirit of thanksgiving and finding things for which to be grateful and so I thought I would give you a slightly different twist!
Rather than just focusing on gratitude only at this time of the year, I thought I would share with you part of the first chapter of my new book, Live a Life Of Joy. It is dedicated to my Mum and so many of you were so kind to me after her passing that I hoped you would enjoy a chance to see part of the book before anyone else! I would love any feedback you have on it and how you think I could improve it or make it read better.
I had planned to give you the whole chapter but it would have taken forever to download and we are all too busy to wait that long! So I want you to know that I am very grateful to all of you who take the time to read my emails, I hope that this one helps you live in gratitude rather than just have fleeting moments of it. Happy Holidays and THANK YOU for all your encouragement and support. Seeing it’s a real family time of the year, I am sending you zooties from me, Ken (my husband) and my Mum!!
AMANDA’S TAKE ON GRATITUDE:
"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven."
~ Johannes A. Gaertner
My most poignant story of gratitude is about my mother. She lived in Australia and I was living in the USA . She was lonely, unhappy, unwell and in pain and I felt so badly not being there to help her. She never complained about it or about missing me but I know it was a huge struggle for her and it still causes me pain to think of how I was not there for her in person.
One day, when she was particularly down, I said ‘Mama why don’t you make a list of things for which you are grateful every day. Allocate 10 minutes and reflect on that list every night before you sleep and during the day if you feel lousy”. We spoke of it for a few nights and then I forgot about it. It did seem to help her though as she seemed happier for a while after that.
When I was going through her belongings after she had died, I found a little spiral bound notebook that she had used as her gratitude book. I still have not been able to read it through yet and just thinking about it brings me to tears because she tried so hard. The effort it took her to write is obvious; her handwriting looks as if her hand was trembling when she wrote it. It is hard to read. And she really did do it for a long time. She never made a big deal of it, that was who she was, she would try everything in an effort to grow, to be pain free, joyful and more active. So if she can write a gratitude journal with ALL the problems she had, so can we!
For me, gratitude is something my mother blessed me with! I have always been grateful for anything anyone did for me! Or for benefits that came along - maybe because I didn’t expect such things, and so it was always a gift to me.
As a little girl, we did not have much money; I knew we were in difficult circumstances (my parents were divorced when it was not a common practice and my father an alcoholic) but I always had what I wanted it seemed. I know my mother would get up every morning at 4am to go to work so she could come home and take us to school and be at home when we came home. She made great sacrifices for us and I have always been grateful to her. I think knowing that and how hard she worked to give her children great schooling, and everything they needed, made me appreciate everything that came to me, from anyone.
Some people who have never experienced gratitude or had it modeled to them by their parents, or other adults when they were growing up, will find this work challenging, but it’s worth it. A whole new dimension is added to life. If we think only of ourselves and expect the world or others to provide what we need, if we fail to see the world through others eyes as well, life becomes a battleground over what we want and what we ‘get’! Gratitude gently leads us to an awareness of others and their needs and helps our hearts and souls expand and ultimately fulfill us more than we could have imagined. It’s not ‘things’ that feed our deepest needs, it’s love and gratitude!
Gratitude is the opposite of selfishness. It is a view away from the self. It is seeing and appreciating anything that is given to you, especially what others have done for you or sacrificed for you or given you. If nothing else, knowing that we are blessed with God’s grace every moment, even though we may not deserve it, is enough to keep me eternally grateful! Let alone all the other blessings in my life.
BLESSINGS COME IN MANY DISGUISES
Sometimes these blessings or gifts come disguised as challenges or hardships or lack or ‘burdens’.
Even if I struggle with finding something for which to be grateful, I do it! When something bad happens or I encounter a challenge or difficulty in life, I try to conclude my thinking of it with ‘well I am grateful for……’.
For example, I had a VERY difficult time once with the customer service hulk (I can’t say department, it is too big) of a particular software company who owns the world it seems! After about 6 hours of being shafted from one country and service person to another, none of whom knew anything other than their narrow area of knowledge, and still having a non working computer, I was ready to kill someone! I immediately hung up and screamed, as you do! I then felt immense gratitude that I owned a computer that used a different operating system! After several days,…I know, I should have done it immediately, but at least I did it after I had calmed down which did take several days - I was able to feel thankful.
Thankful, because I learned a lot through that experience. I learned patience, perseverance, tolerance, the capacity to separate the person to whom I was speaking from the difficulty I was facing, and to realize that what I was thinking and how I was behaving was increasing the frustration more than anything! In any painful situations, we are given wonderful opportunities to find out more about ourselves and practice being kind and tolerant, if not loving. Of course, each time I have been through one of these frustrating experiences, I ultimately understand that it’s all about me and how I respond and not react, in other words, how I manage myself! Not such an easy lesson, but whenever we point a finger at another, there are three pointing back at us! I could not blame anyone else really, no matter how much I wanted to!
I remember Wayne Dyer said once that if we squeeze an orange , orange juice comes out. What comes out when you are squeezed? Is it something with which you are happy or something you would like to change?
Sometimes we have to look really hard to find something for which to be thankful, but it’s worth the effort! It’s better for your nervous system, the nervous systems of those around you, for relationships and generally for life! Being grateful is a direct path to joy. Almost always things we see as negative are really blessings in disguise! Before you judge something that happens to you as horrendous, even if it sounds horrendous and is, try to imagine how this might be a blessing in disguise. We never really know. For example, Lady Di my friend whom you will read more about later, was due to have surgery to remove a tumor this morning. Last night, the endocrinologist said she could not have surgery as she may have Cushing’s disease, a condition where the adrenal glands do not work and had she had surgery her body may have failed to recover even if the surgery was successful.
Her surgery is put off for 2 weeks despite pretty nasty symptoms she lives with daily. But how does Amazing Lady Di look at this? As a blessing! She said she is thrilled as it gives her two weeks to heal more before the surgery, to allow alternative strategies to work; she has even more reason to rest and it’s official she says laughing. But wait, there’s more!
The neurosurgeon said she could go home as she had already been admitted to hospital preparing for surgery. This was unusual at it was 8pm so normally they would say stay now and go home tomorrow. She went home and slept with her 8 year old daughter to whom she is very close. During the night, her daughter had an attack of croup that was so bad she went into respiratory distress, meaning she could have died had Di not been there. Everyone else was sleeping and would not have heard the child. So what looked like an almighty problem like Cushing’s disease held within it’s hands the gift of her daughter’s life and the possibility of alternative healing.
You never know the wrapping in which a blessing will be packaged.
