Being Thankful When Life Is A Bed of Roses, The Thorns Intact!

Greetings Friends!

It has come to my attention… seems to convey my heart almost off and on, always there is a new thing happening. My life in the last few months has been taking a roller coaster ride - you know up, down, up, down!!

Nothing is permanent, our lives keeps on changing. Some days things feels to be going extremely right and it seems that we are hitting all the right notes whereas some days everything turns to be out of order, things just don't cooperate. When life is going well, gratitude allows us to glorify and enhance the goodness, we humans simply like that! But what about when life goes badly? Being grateful in our bad times can seem incredibly tough and complicated especially if you have had more than your share of ill luck. I find it too hard and many a times I even resigned myself to the rotten dejection's.

Some small instances in the recent past aided me to to know that whenever I feel worried, sad or hopeless I should change my attitude and start to count my blessings. Surprisingly when I started to do so I felt I am blessed. Looking back, that feels like an easiest solution to realize that how many things I have to appreciate in my life. However, we often take things for granted. We get addicted to all the options we have - the people, luxuries and the serenity of our lives. If we need to be serious about our gratitude practice, we must also learn to be truly grateful on those hard times too. Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in crisis but I can pretty much assure that practicing gratitude can transform your life. It’s isn't easy anytime, many times I couldn't be grateful in my life and I get frustrated with things but then I try to bounce back.

Occasionally even people who come across our life can help us to feel grateful about our self in bad times. Say, if you fail a test, and you are informed that “I’m sorry you didn't pass the test”. This might simply make you feel down. On the other hand, along with this piece of information if they also assist you in realizing what more you need help with, or what aspects you have to concentrate more. If they also remind you to be thankful about your individual capabilities, things go different. This motivates you to reciprocate the good deeds. In turn, they will have even more reasons to feel gratitude.

As a child when I used to crib for the little luxuries which I didn't have, my mom always used to remind me, that I am more blessed than millions of other people. I never realize the gravity of her logic's until the day I stepped into a psychiatric Institution for doing my internship. There were lot of people who were probably unlike friends you and I have now. There I found different classes of people-the rich, the commoners and even a massive homeless population with mental illnesses. Mental sickness is a great big bug-a-boo and unraveling all about it seems to be impossible… quite scary right? This time I not only had to remind myself how much I have that others don’t, but also how many others are toiling far more than I. Money, power, nothing can replace a destabilized brain, and we are blessed!

In this materialistic world we tend look at the empty half of the glass. What we forget is that the glass is half full too. The most important questions we can ask our self today is, did we wake up this morning with a roof over our head, with food to eat, water to drink, cloth to cover? No doubt we are more blessed. Though we simply put this under the basic standards of human amenities but the reality is that major share of world population is craving for these basic necessities.

When we begin to feel obliged, even for every single obstacle that life throws at us, we learn to acknowledge the situations without friction. We accept things as they are and we go with the flow.

P.s :

Ø  Let’s  make a gratitude list adding things that happened to you and count your blessings daily

Ø  Cultivate the habit of finding something to applause about every person, circumstances, or experience you come across.

Ø  Try to be with people who simply see the silver lining in every darkest cloud.

Ø  Say thank you to everyone (and mean every bit of it!) who cares for you, blesses you, Nurtures your soul

Cheers  J

The floor is yours, now how do you try to be grateful even in the darker situations of life? Do share your positive energy, experiences, encouragement for a deeper insight.