Just Because Gratitude, V24, #09

“I don’t have to get something to be grateful,” a Creating a Thank You Life workshop participant said. She continued, “I can just BE grateful!” This declaration came after she realized she didn’t need to create a negative story to live by, as she had been doing. Instead, she could envision a future filled with gratitude.

We all can.

We can create a Thank You Life by how we choose to show up in relation to what is happening. Regardless of external circumstances, we have the power to choose gratitude.

How you might wonder if life’s circumstances are chaotic and different from what we want.

Well, let me tell you a story. Years ago, I was working with a doctor. He told me his late wife had died of cancer, and he shared with me a great gift she had given him that he cherishes to this day. One day, he had come home, and as was his usual re-entry pattern, he began to unwind by telling her all that had not gone the way he had wanted and just vented a load of complaints to her. Lying on the couch resting, her response to him was, “Sweetheart, problems exist in the world of the living.” Those words woke him up.

Indeed, problems come with living. Life is a series of situations that challenge us to lift into creativity, see possibilities, and take action to create something meaningful out of our circumstances.

Unless we don’t want to.

Unless we want to complain about what is and argue with our circumstances.

Unless we want to suffer.

We all have done that. We have banged our heads against the wall, demanding a door appear, walked away with a headache and blamed the wall for inflicting itself upon us.

Ow.

There is another way.

We can recognize that the wall is solid and find a different way to get to the other side. Perhaps we will become inventors of something that has yet to be created because we choose to preserve, take action and use our creativity to find our way to what is next.

Overcoming challenges and designing new ways of being can help us grow. We can let having fallen to the floor in an attempt to make it past the immovable be a moment to pause, take a breath and wonder:

• How is this serving me?
• What is another way I can be in my life?
• How can I design myself and my actions anew?

We could be grateful for that which calls us to creativity and wonder, Hmmm, what now? What else is possible

Problems > Possibilities > Projects to Action is a Plan for Living by Design.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools for transformation. Use it to lift you into a higher, more creative, resilient state. Challenge yourself to see the blessings in the present moment. Choose to welcome problems as situations to engage creatively with the reality of having a body and living another day.

You can be grateful for simply being alive. You are here, and here is alive. Alive is engaged and engaged calls forward creativity. Creativity is fun and …

Here’s to you creating a Thank You Life!

Blessings and Joy,