Friday, November 11, 2011

GRATITUDE



                                                                                                           
Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling, emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions,and has been considered extensively by moral philosophers such as Adam Smith.The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions. However, with the advent of the positive psychology movement,gratitude has become a mainstream focus of psychological research. The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the understanding of the short term experience of the emotion of gratitude (state gratitude), individual differences in how frequently people feel gratitude (trait gratitude), and the relationship between these two aspects.

In the words of William Arthur Ward:"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." Today treasure the 84,600 seconds sent to you for use in life, unwrap your gift through living life.
Melody Beattie once asserted: Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Walk tall today,this week and month realize rising up today is in itself a privilege handed to you for you and those around you.
I recall watching a special interview on a Briton who was advised by his doctor after series of tests that he had 60 plus days to live. The man woke up the following day went jogging after which he had a full English breakfast amongst other things. The day before he was supposed to die according to the medical report the media came back to interview him and asked what he would do the following day,he suggested they come watch him which they did and to their amazement the man lived life energetically as he had done and didn't die.The doctor ran series of tests on him again and discovered his health had improved,which was said to have experienced a turn-around due to his state of mind.  Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.

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