I *love* Thanksgiving!
I love that we sit down as an entire country and give thanks on one special day reserved for the act of practicing gratitude.
I also believe gratitude is a powerful force that can transform your relationship and your life if you let it in.
When people tell me they are struggling in their relationships, often my first question is, when was the last time you thanked your spouse for something? For anything?
I don’t have research data, but by informal observation I can say that healthy relationships express gratitude on a regular basis and strained, struggling relationships usually don’t.
If you follow me for any length of time, you will hear me say, “Start with thank you.” Look for reasons to thank your spouse. That shifts your focus to the good, so you are looking for good things all day long and when you do that, you often start finding them.
Gratitude is also a way to shift your energy when you are stressed or worried or stuck in traffic. One of my favorite games is to ask myself to declare 5 random things I am thankful for at any given time.
Try it with me…5 things! Go!
Mine are: wedding pictures, my hubby’s smile, the sound of my best friend’s voice (especially when I am having a bad day), self help books, Pinterest.
Gratitude also opens our heart and mind and in that sometimes tiny, yet open space, miracles can happen.
Here are 10 Gratitude Quotes that inspire me:
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” – Oprah Winfrey
“Gratitude is taking a snapshot of an outstanding moment & filing it away in your heart.” – Coach Bobbi
“Trade your expectations for appreciation and your whole world changes in an instant.” – Tony Robbins
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity… It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — Melody Beattie
“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ― Meister Eckhart
“The purpose of life is to love it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
The last 3 quotes are from the author of Simple Abundance, Sarah Ban Breathnach.
Back in 1995 she appeared multiple times on the Oprah show and helped a whole generation of women (including me) start a gratitude practice.
Her simple method? Start a gratitude journal. Every night write down 3 things you were grateful for that day. I was never good at keeping journals, so I tweaked that into my 5 random things I am grateful for, anytime, anywhere. I use the power of gratitude whenever I am nervous, stuck in traffic, in a line or otherwise off center to bring me back to feeling good (or at least a little better).
“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend… when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present— love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure— the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.” ― Sarah Ban Breathnach
“Every time we remember to say “thank you”, we experience nothing less than heaven on earth.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach
“You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.” ― Sarah Ban Breathnach
We are celebrating 30 days of Gratitude with the ModernMarried Facebook Community. Click here to join us.
Today’s LoveWork? Express gratitude to your spouse, to someone at work, to yourself. Do you have a favorite gratitude quote? Please share in the comments.
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