Monday, March 30, 2015

I Can't Say Thank You Enough


I Can’t Say Thank You Enough




Melody Beattie said, “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”.

Gratitude continues to be a life lesson for me. It’s not because I am not grateful. I learned as a child to tell people “thank you”. I learned as a Christian to thank God for everything that comes into my life. But I didn’t realize, and I sometimes still don’t, how much saying “thanks” impacts my view of my daily life.

One day I heard Oprah talking about a gratitude journal. Admittedly, I am not the most focused person to do something like keeping a journal. I tend to work on multiple things at once and they all eventually are completed. (Not the most effective work method by the way, and it's getting better.) Oprah went on to say that feeling gratitude makes life take on a new appreciation. She also said that the more grateful you are, the more things you will draw to be grateful for. I didn’t have much understanding about spiritual laws, so this truly made no sense to me. But because I found myself in a complaining, frustrated place, I decided that I would begin to keep a gratitude journal.

Each morning I would get up, I began to write down three things I was grateful for in my life. Doing this daily seemed to make things to be grateful for skim. My journal started out looking like, “Lord, thank you for breath. Thank you for life.” About a week later it looked life, “Lord, thankful for this tablet. Thank you for lights”. At first it seemed silly to be thankful for such things. I thought, “Someone looking from the outside may think that these things are trivial to be thankful for.” Yet I continued anyway.

Not long after I started writing my very first book, Fearless Prayer, our laptop decided to take a vacation.  My tablet was all that I had. Under usual circumstances this would have caused me to give up. Writing a book was not the easiest feat from a tablet. However, from doing my gratitude journal, I began to understand that things could be worse. I continued to be thankful, and soon a book was born.

Take a look around you and see what you can be grateful for. Sure you could use a bigger place to stay, but thank God there is a place to stay! Sure, your significant other can be annoying, but there are those dying to have a significant other. (Besides, it is a high likelihood that you are just as annoying). Soon you will find that the things that seemed to be annoyances will become things that you are grateful to have. Not only that, you will find that you are more open to creating a way to get the things you truly desire. Being grateful doesn’t mean you settle. It means that you appreciate what is, and look forward to what is to come.

I encourage you to start a gratitude journal. During the times I find myself complaining, I reach for my journal. You can always find things that will seemingly make life better. However, it is very likely someone else will rejoice in what you have. Be grateful.

Peace.

 Here's a beautiful gospel song, Grateful by Hezekiah Walker, that brings me to gratitude every time I hear it.

 If you have any comments, questions, or prayer requests, please contact me at: faithfrfr2014@gmail.com. Also,you can go to my website SherondaLBarksdale.com  , follow me on Facebook at Sheronda L. Barksdale, Entrepreneur and Life Empowerment Coach, Instagram at: sheronda_l_barksdale, and Twitter at: @SherondaGB.


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