Tag Archives: blessings

Reasons To BE THANKFUL

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” –Marcel Proust

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” –Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” –Eckhart Tolle

Hello friend,

Happy Thanksgiving!  I arose this morning with a welcome lightness in my heart.  The weather here promises to allow for a pleasant walk down by the lake before I plop my butt down at the table (and the sofa, and the rocker, etc.) to gorge upon the culinary delights of the day.  I am going to enjoy this holiday!  After the all-time clunker that 2020 has been, I feel like I deserve that.

I mean, just think of all the things we have been through this year….NO!  STOP!  DON’T THINK OF THAT STUFF!  That is not what this day is for.  We don’t need to revisit that stuff today; it will be here waiting for us tomorrow.  Today, let’s just focus on the good things in our lives, the things we really ought to be grateful for on a daily basis but sometimes forget to acknowledge because they are so much in our faces, so much the wallpaper of our lives.  In this year when it is better that we not have a huge celebratory gathering, let’s muster up some huge Gratitude anyway.

I truly believe that Gratitude is the mother of Happiness.  The way I see it, you just can’t get to any real, lasting Happiness unless you can acknowledge the blessings that surround you and permeate all that you do and all that you are.  The ability to find a way to Gratitude no matter how your life looks is a rare and priceless gift, one that we should all strive for.  I say we should begin today.  Any day is a good day to choose Gratitude, but TODAY is always the best one.  Not because it is Thanksgiving—which is a nice reminder, though, I admit—but rather because it is TODAY.  NOW is always the best time to be more than who we have been.  I want that.  So, let us begin.

In this year when it was unwise to mingle outside of your household, I am so grateful for the three other people under my roof: my wife and kids.  While we all have our moments of mess in all of these months of isolation, I can honestly say I would choose these guys to stay with if I had to do it all over again (which I might!).  We are a team.  A good one.

I am thankful for the fresh air and the ability to get outside and breathe it in.  This year has had so much of “There’s nothing to do,” but my restless mind has been saved on so many days simply by getting out the door and feeling the air on my skin and in my lungs.  Whether it is on a walk or bike ride around my neighborhood or swaying in my hammock as I stare up into the big trees and open sky, the option to get out and breathe it all in is often everything to me.  I am grateful every time I am out there.

I am grateful for the other people in my life: my extended family, my friends, my co-workers, my social media community, and you.  For the ones who have been my allies, either silently and vocally, I am more thankful than ever for them this year.  And though some of us don’t always see eye-to-eye and have needed even more boundaries this year than ever to maintain our sanity—loving from a healthy distance has become a well-practiced skill—I am glad to know they are out there, and I truly wish the best for them.  I am so pleased—and relieved, really—that after all of the political drama of this year and the (not always spoken) tension and strain it has brought into so many of my relationships, that I can sincerely wish them all health and happiness (and, of course, a more empathetic, liberal worldview!).  I guess sometimes a simple lack of grudges and bitterness is a gift.  Blessings come with many different faces; today I am thankful for all of them and the lessons they keep teaching me.

I am grateful for my health.  I know people who have had COVID and been relatively unscathed by it, and I know people who have died from it, and many variations in between.  It scares me, and I am so thankful that no one inside my house has had it.  But it is not just the absence of COVID that I feel grateful for.  I have struggled with an injury for much of this year that has limited my ability to move freely and to enjoy many of the things I love to do.  That has made me acutely aware of the things I can still do and has made me grateful for each improvement I have made on my way back to health.  I am truly delighted to be able to do the things I can do.

I am grateful for writing.  Both my daily journal entries and these occasional letters to you provide me with some much-needed clarity and sanity.  That is certainly the case this year, but I can say the same every year.  It is my escape from “reality” but simultaneously my access to Truth.  I am thankful for it every day.

Lastly, I am grateful for days like today that are meant to give me both the time and the reminder to be thankful.  While it is nice, on an ordinary day of the year, to bring my awareness into a moment and find myself smiling or feeling a wave of positive energy all around me, it is so much better when I can extend that awareness to the reasons for my Joy and for the lightness in my being.  This day is all about that awareness.  It reminds me of the things that I need to seek out more of in my life.  I appreciate both the reminder and the lightness of being.

How about you?  What are you grateful for today?  Open up your journal and your heart.  What comes to mind first when you think about your greatest blessings on this day?  Is it a person, an object, something you do, a state of being, or something else?  Are you aware of your gifts often enough throughout the year, or is this the day that makes you fully conscious?  Of the things you are most grateful for, what can you do throughout the year to bring more of them into your life?  How can you become more grateful?  A Gratitude journal?  Prayer?  A Gratitude jar?  Regular journaling?  Is it just a matter of changing your lenses and focusing on the right thing, the roses rather than the thorns?  What method will you start with?  Leave me a reply and let me know: What are your reasons to be thankful today?

Happy Thanksgiving,

William

P.S. If this resonated with you today, please share it.  Spread Gratitude!

P.P.S. If this way of questioning yourself and discovering your light appeals to you, consider buying my book, Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailer.  Namaste.

Taking a Moment to Say “Thanks!” Instead of “Please???”

IMG_2404“We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.” –Neal A. Maxwell

Hello friend,

“DEAR GOD, I WANNA TAKE A MINUTE, NOT TO ASK FOR ANYTHING FROM YOU, BUT SIMPLY TO SAY THANK YOU FOR ALL I HAVE. –SHARE IF YOU ARE THANKFUL”

This was the first meme that popped up on my Facebook Home page this morning when I was laying in bed. For whatever reason, I instantly felt guilty. I suppose I am no different than most folks who have grown up with the concept—whether through our parents and grandparents, or, more likely, just too much television and movies—of God as wish-granter. We pray for our team to win, for our friends to travel safely, for our child to make the team, and for ourselves to get that new job. We ask our Higher Power for that stuff. We usually ask nicely, too, starting most requests with “Please God….” Even if we didn’t grow up in a very religious family, the God-as-wish-granter theme permeates our culture. If we really, really want something, we ask God. We call it prayer. 

I don’t pray a lot. Well, not in the traditional, down-on-my-knees-at-bedtime kind of praying. It is probably because my concept of God is a little different than the usual one (see my post “Who Is God?” from December 2015). I believe deeply in God as All There Is, including you and me. I believe that all of the Universe is Divine. This doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to pray; it just changes the context of the conversation a bit. You might even say it makes a prayer out of everything I think, say, or do. When I have my occasional direct words aimed at God as seemingly something outside of me—what most folks would recognize as my nearest thing to traditional prayer—it definitely is all about gratitude. I don’t make direct requests. I give direct thanks, usually for a simple but beautiful moment where the Divine just seems to permeate every bit of the moment. More often than not, it is when I am either observing Nature’s beauty or watching my kids be the miraculous little creatures that they are. Sometimes it simply overwhelms my heart, and I just whisper, “Thanks, God.” Those are my conversations with God.

Even though traditional prayer is a rarity for me, because of my worldview that holds everything as fully God, it may be reasonable to conclude from that that all of my thoughts, words, and deeds are a form of communication with God. When I hear of a religious extremist’s story of withholding medical treatment from their suffering child, preferring instead to “leave it in God’s hands,” I usually find myself shouting at the screen, “But YOU are God, and so is the DOCTOR and the MEDICINE! Please pray, of course, but DO SOMETHING! To not try to save your child is actually taking it out of God’s hands, not the other way around! Your hands are God’s hands!!!” I know that is not how everyone sees things, but my view shapes my perceptions.

With that said, and if my thoughts and actions are my form of communication with God, then I am totally guilty of making my prayers into Wish Lists rather than Thank You Notes. Almost always I am in STRIVING mode. I am thinking about or doing something that is about me striving for something else. Something more. Something better. I am trying to get out of this situation and into one that speaks more truly to who I am and what my dreams are. I can be pretty single-minded about it, too. The translation of this—given my concept of God—is essentially that I am not grateful for where I am and I want to get out of here. In regular prayer terms: “Please God, rescue me and bring me the type of success I desire!”

That is the source of the quick jolt of guilt I received when I read that Facebook post this morning. It hits me on a parallel to the way it hits other people, even though we pray differently. I am just as guilty as making my prayer a request rather than a “Thank You.” Seeing that more clearly now is a great reminder for me to become more about the NOW. It means that I can, even in the midst of my striving for better and more, become more fully present and aware of all the wonderful gifts in my life as I now know it. I think of the health of my family, which has been really, amazingly good throughout my life (knocking on my desk right now!). I think of my convenient work schedule and the corresponding opportunity to spend so much time with my kids. I think of my ability to share my words with you and others all over the world. I think of all the freedoms I have because I live in America, and all the comforts I enjoy—clean water, safety, a warm home of my own, to name a few—as a middle-class member of this society. These are all things well worthy of my deep and abiding gratitude, and not just once in a while. To fail to become more aware of these fabulous gifts—and thus more consistently grateful—would be a show of immense disrespect to my beautiful life and the magnificence of the God I believe in.

It doesn’t have to mean that I must stop striving to improve my life and the world around me, however. Even in my haste to improve myself and my station, I can still acknowledge and honor the wonder of the gifts I am presently living with. The concepts of Striving and Gratitude do not have to be mutually exclusive. They don’t have to compete with each other. So, I can take time to step out of my actions—the bulk of which are Striving things—to say “THANK YOU,” which is a Being thing. I can be both grateful and ambitious. I can say prayers of thanks and do acts of ambition. Oh yeah, and I should probably take a few moments to just sit and BE. To stop thinking and striving. To just ENJOY. That sounds like it would be okay, too. I am pretty sure God is in that silence, too. I will meet Her there.

How about you? How do you pray? Open up your journal and think about your relationship with your Higher Power. What is the tone of most of your communication? Are you usually there to ask or to thank? What do you ask for? Big, general things, like world peace or an end to hunger? Or smaller, specific things, like your blind date to go well or the weather to be nice? Do you feel guilty asking for things for yourself? If everything you do is actually a prayer about how you want your world to be, what is your lifestyle saying about what you desire the most? Are your actions more grounded in the present, or are you like me and often focused on building your someday? How often do you consciously thank your Higher Power, for either your life in general or a specific stroke of good fortune? Do you believe in a God that picks and chooses which prayers to answer, which wishes to grant? Do you think that showing more gratitude would make God more likely to answer your prayers? On a spectrum from All Requests to All Thanks, where do you land regarding your conversations with God? Leave me a reply and let me know: What are you grateful for today?  

Personify abundance in all you do,

William

Lessons From A Slave

DSC_0906“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” –Cynthia Ozick

Hello friend,

I am guilty. Sometimes I get self-indulgent and actually start to believe that the world is being tough on me. I think I am too busy and working too hard. I wonder, “Why is life so difficult? What did I do to deserve this?” It doesn’t take much to trigger these grumbling moments:

  • Not getting enough sleep due to kids and other commitments, such as staying up late to write this letter to you.
  • My back is stiff from standing too long, especially on a hard floor at my job.
  • My muscles are sore from working out at the gym.
  • I have to miss a night of putting my kids to bed because of a special event at work. I HATE missing even a single bedtime with them; it pains my heart terribly.
  • My wife is leaning on me too hard about what to do with my time or with our money.
  • My palate is bored because I have had Cheerios for breakfast four times this week, and I make the same half-dozen different meals for supper each week.
  • It feels like I am losing track of my siblings because I only spend a few long weekends per year with them, which feels woefully inadequate.
  • Other than visiting my hometown for Christmas and taking a couple of long weekends at the family lake cabin in the Summer, we haven’t been on a “real vacation” in several years.

And on and on and on. You get the picture. There are so many opportunities to grumble, so many temptations to cast the verdict that Life Is Difficult.

Thankfully, though, once in a while, a reality check comes along and smacks me upside the head, knocking some sense into me. This past week, I have been getting a daily dose of that smacking. At her request, I bought my wife a DVD copy of the film “12 Years A Slave” for Christmas, as we have never seen it. Knowing the weight of the topic, we have been waiting for just the right time to watch it. From all indications, it is the kind of movie that requires some processing afterwards. So, it has been looming out there for a couple of months now, a haunting-but-magnetic abyss, just waiting to be plunged into.

I think the Universe knows about this stuff, though, and it has a way of making you face the things you need to face if you want to remain at peace. So, when I finished my book last week and went to my library’s online shelves for a new one, what should jump right off the screen at me but 12 Years A Slave, by Solomon Northrup, the true story that inspired the award-winning movie. Call it what you like—fate, destiny, synchronicity, the Law of Attraction—but the Universe was knocking on my door that day. I answered.

I am only just past the halfway point in the story now, and it undoubtedly has many more lessons for me to learn, but its effect has certainly been felt already. Before I go further, though, perhaps a short synopsis would help. Solomon Northrup was an African-American, born free in New York in the early 1700s. He grew up there, married, and had children. With the promise of good pay for some temporary work, he was led away from his family to Washington, DC, where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He remained there for twelve years. I am not yet to the part of the book where he returns to freedom, but it was upon his return in the mid-1700s that he wrote his story. It is clear that he is both well-educated and humble, and the tale seems to be completely unembellished.

What the book does well, however, is detail the daily life of a slave on a cotton plantation, and, in this case, one with a particularly vicious master. It is devastating, truly, and so difficult to comprehend how these people kept themselves going from one day to the next, one sorrowful year after another, with nothing more to look forward to in their lives than returning to the dust from which they came. It has certainly made me do a double-take on the life that I am sometimes tempted to grumble about.

  • Not getting enough sleep? The slaves slept lightly due to hypervigilance, knowing that if they were not in the fields working when the sun came up, they would be whipped mercilessly. They worked past dark in the field, then had to return and do all of the regular chores before they were allowed to make their own supper and go to their brief sleep—on the ground or a piece of wood, no mattress or pillows. Every day of the year.
  • My back a little stiff from standing at my part-time job? The slaves worked at a breakneck pace to keep up and get their daily quota of pounds of cotton, being whipped if they dared pause for even a moment, and then being thoroughly brutalized with the whip at the end of the day if they didn’t hit their number. No matter how sick or injured, the drill was the same: work every moment and produce well, or face the wrath of the master.
  • Sore from the gym? I won’t even bother addressing this one.
  • Missing a night of putting my kids to bed? Slaves and their children were regularly sold away from each other without regard, leaving both sides devastated and the parents to live with only the hope that their child’s master would be one of the more humane ones. Nothing more. Not the chance to put them to bed, to watch them grow up, or to even know if they had become grandparents. Nothing.
  • Time and money pressures? The slaves never had a choice about what to do with their time. They couldn’t pursue their passions or take a personal day, couldn’t even decide in which order to do their own chores. There was no money to be concerned with at all. Their bodies were bought and sold by others instead.
  • Bored with a limited menu? The slaves of Louisiana were given a small amount of bacon and corn meal each week, enough for two small meals per day. Never anything different or more, even if the bacon spoiled or became infested with bugs that week.
  • Losing track of siblings? Just as with children, it was a rare case that a slave was on the same plantation as any other member of her family. The concept of family basically ceased to exist.
  • Haven’t had a “real vacation”? This may seem silly to even address, but it is a good review of the rest. As I mentioned, the slaves worked every single day, had no money to go anywhere with, and had neither family nor family home to visit. If they were caught trying to go to a good place, they would likely have paid with their lives, or at the very least 500 lashes with the whip, “well-laid on,” as was the lingo. Perhaps death would be preferable.

Slavery is, for me, simply an unimaginable existence. Even with a good master, it is still bondage. And, as Northrup says, that is NEVER better than even the worst days of freedom. I think that most days, I am extremely grateful for my existence and well aware of my blessings. But after this perfectly unpleasant reminder called 12 Years A Slave, it is clear to me that it would be nothing short of a disgrace to complain about my circumstances (or almost any circumstances above poverty or incarceration). So, when I become self-indulgent and feeling oppressed by lack of income or busy-ness or missing my kids’ bedtime, I think of the slaves. They had it a billion times worse than I do, and through no fault of their own and no great deed of mine.

My life is darn good by any measure, but when I think about those slaves and the complete absence of opportunity to live their dreams—or even to think that the concept of having dreams was pertinent to them—my heart just breaks, and I know how, on the wide spectrum of human experiences across history, mine is at the far, far end to the positive. I am a truly blessed being. I thank my lucky stars for that.

How about you? How aware of your blessings are you? Get out your journal and consider your existence. What are your biggest gripes? Who or what seems to be oppressing you? Is it certain people? Your financial situation? Your health? How bad is it? Go ahead and indulge yourself for a moment: name what is weighing you down, and just how much it weighs. Now consider a comparison. If slavery doesn’t do it for you—maybe you want something that feels more contemporary to you—imagine the people living today under oppressive regimes, without the freedom express themselves or live as they choose. Or pick someone from a Third World country, where economic conditions keep the people from moving beyond addressing their most basic survival needs. What do your woes look like in comparison? Does it make you feel embarrassed to complain? The goal here is not to make you wrong for having gripes, but rather to make you more aware of, perhaps, how well you have it in the grand scheme of things. So, on a scale of 0-100, with zero being completely stifled by your circumstances and 100 being completely blessed and unoppressed, where do you stand? Leave me a reply and let me know, What lessons do a slave’s life teach you? 

Gratitude is beautiful,

William

Happy Gratitude Day!

DSC_0127“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” —Meister Eckhart

Hello friend,

I had a birthday this week. Birthdays seem to be received in such a wide variety of ways as people move deeper into adulthood. I know people who will simply not acknowledge that it is their birthday. They bristle at any greetings or gifts from loved ones, sometimes even going so far as to question the intelligence of the well-wishers, as there is simply NOT a birthday occurring on this day. I know others who somewhat-begrudgingly acknowledge their day and humbly accept their gifts and greetings, but they don’t want to talk about how old they are or dive into any deep sentiment about the passage of time and the life they have lived. They will be pleased to have the day move into tomorrow, just another day. Still others I know are more than happy to use the occasion as an excuse to have a party, eat some yummy stuff, and misbehave a bit. It is another Halloween or St. Patrick’s Day for them.

For me, though, Birthday Mode is something different. I have never been much for wild celebrations, so it is always very low-key. I enjoy the cake, of course, and hanging out with my wife and kids. I like hearing from my parents and siblings, and birthdays and holidays tend to provide us with the excuse to finally make the connection. Other than the cake and a few extra phone calls, though, the day tends to look—on the outside, anyway–like most of the others.

On the inside, though, the concept of my birthday has changed. This year I was keenly aware all day that I have come to see it as “Gratitude Day,” a day to be reminded of all of the amazing gifts in my life, which are too many to count but can definitely be felt. So, while the day seemed to go on fairly normally on the outside, I was doing an internal meditation on these innumerable blessings and just how thankful I am for them.

Of course, I thought about the many wonderful people in my life. My wife and kids–with whom I shared the cake and the laughs that day–are the very best that I could imagine, so it was cool just to bask in that kind of gratitude that comes from being up close and personal with its source. My parents and siblings are such admirable people in so many ways, and so I found myself truly absorbing and appreciating each call, FaceTime, and voicemail. These are conversations that I cherish. And while I don’t have many close friends, I was well reminded of them and how interconnected they are with the story of my life. Without them, there is not me, and it was nice to take some time to ruminate on that idea.

The group of people that surprised me most in my level of gratitude for them was the Facebook crowd. Seriously! This is the first year I have been on Facebook—yes, I am a little slow to join the new millennium—and one of the people closest to me said that I should make open to the public as little about me as possible. She said she doesn’t list her birthday because she doesn’t want people who barely know her wishing her a Happy Birthday. I didn’t listen, of course, so how pleasantly surprised I was to get a little shout-out from dozens and dozens of folks, mostly old high school mates and distant relations. Though I would probably not recognize all of their faces if I saw them today, I was somehow very touched and appreciative of the little moment it took them to just type “Happy BDay” or the like. It reminded me of where I came from and also of the importance of small gestures and how I need to do better with them, as I was certainly grateful to every one of those folks who took that little moment. People are good!

Already in the gratitude flow, I found myself really aware of the little things that I generally take for granted. As a middle-class American suburbanite in the 21st century, I live so amazingly comfortably compared to most anyone in the history of the world. There is a fridge full of food and money to buy more. I know I will be warm through a Minnesota Winter. Everyone in my family is healthy, and we can see a doctor any time that changes. My bookshelves are full, and the library is nearby in a pinch. And I have the privilege of not having to think about this stuff everyday, leaving me free to do things like studying life coaching and writing this letter to you. It is definitely a good gig, this one of mine.

Finally, I took a page from The Secret and expressed my gratitude for all of the magnificence to come. Actually, I find myself doing this almost every day in my journal entries. I am in the habit of sharing my thanks in advance for the many wonderful blessings that are surely on the way (it helps that I see everything as a blessing in my philosophy). For me, this helps me to walk each day in gratitude and to maintain my unbridled optimism for the future. In that vein, this is how I closed my journal entry on my birthday afternoon:

I am going to have a very good 43rd year. I can feel that. There is so much growth out there for me, and I am wildly grateful for that. Lots of change, lots of growth, lots of Love, lots of fun, lots of memories. I am really, really excited for what is coming. I am about to jump out of my skin as I think about it right now. The Universe and I will be sharing our gifts with one another. I am SO excited. It truly is a happy Happy Birthday and Gratitude Day that I am basking in right now. God permeates. I am oozing Peace. Life is beautiful.

How about you? What are you grateful for today? Open up your journal and remind yourself why it is good to be alive and be you. What are the circumstances you are most thankful for? Do you have food and shelter? Do you have enough money to pay for those things? Do you feel safe where you live? Are you reading this on a computer or smartphone? Are you allowed to freely express yourself? Do you have the chance to pursue your dreams? Are you educated? If you answered “yes” to any of those things, you are off to a good start. If “yes” to all, how blessed you are! How about the people in your life? Think about all of your friends and family members who make your little corner of the world a place you appreciate. Which ones would you not trade for a million dollars? How many people would take that moment out of their day to send you a Facebook birthday wish? Would that moment make you smile the way it made me smile? Are you grateful for that moment? What about the coming moments? Do you allow yourself to be grateful in anticipation of good things to come? Is your level of optimism about the future reflected in the level of anticipatory gratitude you feel toward it, or do you keep these things separate? How do you treat your birthday? Do you deny it or embrace it? Do you celebrate big? Does it draw you into deep thought about your life and its many blessings? If you are like me, your birthday has become a lot like what the other big holidays have become: a chance to give thanks for this beautiful Life. Leave me a reply and let me know: Do you celebrate Gratitude Day?

Let your light shine,

William