ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE

As Scout, the girl-shaped boulder in Kiva & the Stone Nation guided Kiva along her journey to becoming a YaYa Hiké she taught her 12 lessons.  Today I am writing about Lesson #4: “When you receive a gift from the Everything Maker you must give thanks.”

And what Scout doesn't say but is implied in the book is that everything in the Universe is a gift from the Everything Maker. Therefore, her lesson to all of us is to give thanks for everything that comes within the realm of our consciousness and then some.

Another word for "give thanks" is gratitude...a very powerful word. And if you don't believe gratitude is important just type the word into your internet search engine. From mainstream religions, to new age philosophies, to university researchers, every article I found  on the internet stated pretty much the same thing: an attitude of gratitude makes a person's life more positive.

Just ask Oprah, the queen of talk show hosts and one of the richest women in the word. In a post she wrote in November 2011 she states, "Appreciating what shows up in your life changes your personal vibration. Gratitude elevates your life to a higher frequency. You will radiate and generate more goodness when you bring your attention to what you have, and stop focusing on what you don't, because what you focus on expands."


Then there is the opinion of Dr. Martin Seligman, the Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the researchers who coined the phrase, "learned helplessness" back in the 1960's. He believes gratitude is so important that he created a Gratitude Questionnaire to find out just how grateful his clients are in order to gauge how positive they are and how much help they will need to turn their lives from helplessness to happiness.


Then of course there is the bible which states in Colossians 3:16: "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts."

For me gratitude is a daily practice.  Each morning as I write in my journal I spend the first few minutes writing down 5 items, people, actions, etc. that I am grateful for. This morning I was grateful for my friends, for the money I need to buy items for my townhouse, for my new computer, for the beautiful weather in Colorado and for my awesome family. Each day my list can be different or it can be the same but whatever the list entails that day I know that being grateful helps me stay focused on what is important in my life and like Oprah explained, changes my personal vibration.

So today I will end this blog post with an Attitude of Gratitude by sharing with you the closing I write at the end of every journal entry I make. "Thank you Source for everything you provide me. I am Yours how may I serve?!!!"

Happy Reading!