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“I love you.” “You are amazing.” “I’m so much better because of you in my life.” How does it feel just to read those words? Would you love to have someone say those words to you today? I’ve been thinking lately about the power of Gratitude and Generosity in my life and I believe that they represent two of the most powerful forces for personal happiness and success in my life.
Sometimes life gets so busy, not only just everything going on at the office but then we have home-life and other community responsibilities and often we are left feeling completely exhausted as we crashed into bed some nights. Occasionally, I’ll wake up in the morning and catch myself questioning, “Why should I wake up and go into the office?” That thought is always interrupted usually before it even is complete, “It’s because I LOVE our patients.”
I feel so blessed to be able to do what I do. To make a difference in other’s lives. To give them the information and solutions to their challenging health issues and help them find the path to healing. It is rewarding on so many levels.
It’s no secret that success means different things to different people but I’ll wager that part of the definition for everyone includes the feeling of fulfillment and happiness.
So how do we attain that state of fulfillment and happiness?
It seems to me that there are at least two ways. The first way is to focus on all of the things that we don’t have and wish for things to change. The other way is to be grateful for what we already have and work to become someone that good things happens to.
When you look around the world you can see that the first approach certainly is a popular approach but it rarely produces the desired result. In fact it has failure built right into the formula. It is geared for some unattainable future when everything will be “fixed”. It’s the “I’ll be happy when I get more money, get married, get a new job, move out of this apartment…” trap. What people don’t realize is that there will always be challenge and conflict and disappointment and with that mindset, happiness and success will never come.
What about the person that takes the other path to fulfillment and success? The personal development guru Jim Rohn was quoted as saying, “Success is not something you pursue. Success is something you attract based on the person you become.” So what does being grateful for what we have do to us that makes us more attractive and magnetized to the things that we want?
I imagine that there are a lot of correct answers to that question but one thing I know for sure is that when I’m in that state, I see opportunities everywhere! Opportunities for my personal growth, opportunities to help and lift others, opportunities to grow physically, mentally, spiritually and financially. I recognize that I am abundantly blessed and it is easy to give from that state of abundance.
It reminds me of the motto of my Alma Mater, Life University was ” To Give, To Do, To Love, To Serve – Out of a Sense of Abundance.”
Talking and thinking about what you are grateful for is important but it pales in comparison to actually practicing it. I can think and feel the emotion of gratitude but when that emotion is so much a part of me that I can’t contain it anymore, it is manifest in my expressions of generosity. It is in the expression of love, kindness and concern for another person that I make my gratitude for my abundance manifest.
It doesn’t need to be much. It can be a box of donated canned goods for a food pantry or kind comment to a friend on Facebook. Even a kind word or smile can literally change the direction of a person’s life. I know that my life has been altered on several occasions based on the heartfelt words of someone who cared for me.
The developer of Chiropractic B.J. Palmer famously said, “We never know how far reaching something we may think, say or do today will affect the lives of countless millions tomorrow.”
