Gratitude: The Best Advice I’ve Ever Received

Given that we celebrate Thanksgiving this week; I want to share with you the most valuable piece of advice that I’ve ever received.

Photo by Jon Tyler on Unsplash

The advice I am sharing with you is THE secret weapon to help you live a healthier, happier and more successful life.  Here it is:

“Everyday, cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude,” Rick Warren

Gratitude, an antidote for stress

When I first heard this advice three years ago, I was in hand-to-hand combat with my arch enemy – stress.  I longed for a sense of peace and ease, and I needed to reorient my inner compass.  So I gave Rick’s advice a shot.

I rose early one morning with the goal of being grateful for my life.  To welcome in the good, and to focus on the positives.

It was dark.  It was quiet.  And a relaxation that I had not felt in months, covered over me.  I closed my eyes, not quiet sure what to expect or what to do.  For reasons I can’t explain, I was prompted to reach way back into my life, as far as I could remember.

Almost instantly, I was watching images from my early life flash in front of  me.  I was so surprised that I wondered if I was dying.

I saw banana seat bicycles with cards in the spokes and Hot Wheels race cars and colorful kites and marbles skidding along sidewalks and exploding model rockets and paper airplanes flying across class rooms and broken birthday pinatas spilling out candy and overturned snow sleds and bowling alleys and pianos and my first Beatles album.  I saw, with clarity, my childhood friends and neighbors and family members whom I loved, and random people whom I had forgotten long ago.

I was completely overwhelmed.

It was all so random.  Images, both trivial and important, rushed before my mind’s eye.

I struggled to take it all in, my hands motioned to grab them, but it was all too much.  I was overtaken, and when I finally opened my eyes, those images that I could not catch, I feared lost forever.

How long I was in my hallucinatory trance I’m not sure, but, when I “awoke,” I longed to go back.  I felt humbled by all that had been done for me, for all the people who had stepped into my life to build me up and to care for me.  For all the patience and grace extended to me that I didn’t deserve.  And I felt that a higher power had miraculously knit together all those tiny moments into a string of hours and days and months and years that I call my life.

As this understanding warmed me with its implications, I was overcome with gratitude.

“Always be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Be thankful in all circumstances.”  1 Thess 5:18 (NLTSE)

Gratitude = Thanksgiving + Grace

When I researched the word “gratitude” I found that it’s derived from the Latin word “gratus”, which means “thankful and pleasing.”  And that gratus, is closely related to the word “gratia”, which is the foundation for the word “grace”.

Therein, my friends, is the key to real, heartfelt gratitude.  First, is to be thankful for what you’ve received, and second, is to know when you’ve been extended grace. In fact, Robert Emmons, the leading scientific researcher on gratitude, and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, corroborates my understanding of gratitude:

“First, it’s an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received.”  And second, “We recognize the sources of this goodness as being outside of ourselves. It didn’t stem from anything we necessarily did ourselves in which we might take pride.”

And so, on one pre-dawn morning I became a living testament to Professor Emmons’ research.  Not only do I now cultivate an attitude of gratitude everyday, but I have a renewed appreciation for the role I play in other people’s lives.  And I will strive to be that person who pops into someone’s mind, some early morning far down the road from today, because of something good I brought into their life.

Be Wise & Successful…

1. Morning Ritual.  As soon as you open your eyes immediately give thanks for 2 to 3 things.  It’s important to beat any anxious thoughts to the punch.  Do this everyday and it will change your life.

2. Journal.  Spend 5 minutes, as soon as possible after you get-up, jotting down what you are grateful for (watch for my next post on gratitude journaling).

3. Evening. As you shut down your computer, as you put your head on the pillow, purposely be thankful for what went well in your day.

4. Give Thanks.  Generously say, “thank you”.  Sincerely thank your friends, family and strangers often.