“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
Are You Naturally Grateful?
For too many years to count, I have noticed there are two kinds of people…
Naturally grateful…
And those of us who have to work at it.
If Cicero is right, we must obey our parents and vault gratitude to the top of our emotional hierarchy, and place it at the base of all our values!
Cindy believes that Gratitude is the engine of all change and that becoming Resilient, Authentic, Creative, and Empathetic is not possible with an ungrateful heart.
Cindy, Kent, Bob, Grace, and Francisco, are naturally grateful.
I am not…
Or to say, so far, I haven’t been.
I have to work hard to remember to be grateful. I am, authentically so, an engineer at heart. And as an engineer, we all know things are going to break, usually at the worst time producing some sort of catastrophe.
“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time.” ~ Murphy’s Law
I believe Murphy was an optimist!
And that happy picture I chose this morning of the little girl with her lion friend could turn out catastrophic… in the next frame we would see just a happy, less hungry lion:)
But…
That’s life.
And on balance, I believe our stars outweigh our scars… our hopes outweigh our hurts.
So today, and all days hereafter, I promise to actually choose gratitude over reason.
My friends would say that there is always a reason to be grateful.
I would offer the contrary.
But as I see it, becoming naturally grateful does have a big benefit that living in the shadow doesn’t…
We simply get to smile more… and that is a really big deal!
God Bless,
Eric Richard Haas
GRACE NOTE: As you approach your days ahead think of gratitude as walking with a friend. Take their hand, smile, and simply savor the journey.
Your bridge of Grace over the river of tears.
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