Giving Thanks. M. J. Ryan

      Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted—a paved road or a

       washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation,

       you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling

       that nurtures the soul.

      —Rabbi Harold Kushner

      One of the incredible truths about gratitude is that it is impossible to feel both

       the positive emotion of thankfulness and a negative emotion such as anger or fear

       at the same time. Gratitude births only positive feelings—love, compassion, joy,

       and hope. As we focus on what we are thankful for, fear, anger, bitterness simply

       melt away, seemingly without effort.

      How can this be? The answer is that gratitude helps us track success and the

       brain naturally works to track success. If you have ever watched a baby learn

       something, you’ll know what I mean. Learning to walk, for example, she stands

       and puts out one foot. Boom! Down she goes because her balance wasn’t right.

       Instead of castigating herself for blowing it, getting angry, or blaming the floor or

       her shoe, she just registers that it didn’t work and tries again.

       As we get older, however, we get schooled in our mistakes, and learn to focus

       on what’s lacking, missing, inadequate, and painful. That’s why gratitude is so

       powerful. It helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness where we notice

       what’s right instead of what’s wrong. Gratitude reminds us to be like plants,

       which turn toward, not away, from the light.

      14

      Joy is prayer—Joy is strength—Joy is love—Joy is a net of love by which you can

       catch souls. She gives most who gives with joy.

      —Mother Teresa

      I don’t know about you, but in general, there hasn’t been a lot of joy, that open-

       ing and swelling of the heart, in my life. It wasn’t because of my circumstances,

       because they weren’t particularly hard, but because of my mental training. Like so

       many of us, I was busy climbing the ladder of success, and took no time to enjoy

       the journey. I was too busy getting on to the next challenge. But I got sick and

       tired of a joyless existence, and so have thought a lot in the past few years about

       how to bring more joy into my life. The more I think about it, the more I believe

       that joy and gratitude are inseparable. Joy is defined by the dictionary as an

       “emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of

       possessing what one desires,” while gratitude is that “state of being appreciative

       of benefits received.” In other words, whenever we are appreciative, we are filled

       with a sense of well-being and swept up by the feeling of joy.

      15

      Begin today. Declare out loud to the Universe that you are willing to let go of

       struggle and eager to learn through joy.

      —Sarah Ban Breathnach

      Want to feel more joyful? Take a moment right now to think of all that you have

       accomplished today and celebrate each feat, no matter its size.You feel better,

       even if only a little bit, right? The more we pay attention to our successes and

       accomplishments, the more success we can create. And we’ll view life as a grand

       adventure that we’re willing to show up for rather than a series of tedious tasks

       to be crossed off or endured.

      17

      The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

      —Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Young children are such exuberant, joy-filled creatures, eager to embrace life

       in all its mystery and majesty. Everything is new, exciting, a gift—a bubble, a

       snowflake, a mud puddle. But something in the process of growing up so often

       takes the juice out of us.We become encrusted, hard, jaded. We lose our joy, our

       exuberance, our passionate embrace of life.We trudge instead of skip, retreat

       instead of explore, “too old for that,” whatever “that” is.

       This drying up is so common that when we meet a vibrant, joy-filled older

       person, he or she stands out as a singular exception. But we don’t have to lose

       the happiness or juiciness of youth. All we need to do is to tap into our sense

       of gratitude, for when we do, we are like little children again, seeing the world

       for the first time.

      18

      Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.

      —Henry Ward Beecher

      In Simple Pleasures of the Garden, Dawna Markova shares a story about a woman who

       has kept her attitude of gratitude alive: “Several years ago, I was walking in March

       along a gravel road that led to the ocean in Rhode Island. A very old and thin

       woman came hobbling down a driveway toward me. I waved and continued

       walking, but as I passed, she grabbed my arm, turned around and began to pull

       me in the direction of her house. I instantly thought of the witch in Hansel and

       Gretel, and tried to pull back, but that only made her clutch tighter around my

       wrist. Besides, she didn’t cackle, so I relented.

       “She didn’t say a word, in fact, until we approached her house: a shingle-

       style cottage with green shutters and a front lawn erupting everywhere in purple

       crocuses. She released me there, throwing her arms up in the air and shouting,

       ‘Look at this splendor! Isn’t it a miracle?!’”

      21

      Mental sunshine will cause the flowers of peace, happiness, and prosperity to

       grow upon the face of the Earth. Be a creator of mental sunshine.

      —graffition a wall in Berkeley, California

      Gratitude makes us feel good because it helps us widen our frame of vision.

       Under depression or stress, we can develop tunnel vision, seeing only this prob-

       lem, that difficulty.We can get overtaken by a heavy, dark feeling of despair. But

       when we experience a sense of gratitude, we give ourselves a dose of mental

       sunshine. Suddenly the world seems brighter, and we have more options.

       And the greatest thing is that as we experience the mental sunshine of

       gratitude, we begin to glow with sunshine ourselves. Suddenly not only is the

       world brighter, but we are too. Soon we notice that our lives are full of people

       who want to be