Thoughts on Gratitude

Here are some great thoughts on gratitude. Many thinkers throughout time have written down their thoughts and theories on why its important to be grateful for what you have and gratitude for where you are in life. Enjoy these nuggets of wisdom and think about things in your life that you are grateful for:

• God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” ~William A. Ward
• The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. ~H.U. Westermayer
• Think about what you want, not what you don’t want. Be grateful for what you got, and you will get more to be grateful for. ~Travis Wright
• Gratitude is the memory of the heart. ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French
• Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. ~G.B. Stern
• If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart
• If you have lived, take thankfully the past. ~John Dryden
• When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? ~G.K. Chesterton
• The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. ~John E. Southard
• [G]ratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton
• You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~G.K. Chesterton
• For each new morning with its light,
  For rest and shelter of the night,
  For health and food, for love and friends,
  For everything Thy goodness sends.
  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Don’t Dog on Yourself about the Dumb things You’ve Done.

Give yourself pep talks.

Take a moment in the morning of each day, to actually tell yourself how much you love yourself. Talk to yourself and remind yourself of your successes. Focus on the future, and live in the moment. Learn to get better each and every day.

The more that you focus on the negative and dumb stuff that you have done, the more that the guilt and the feelings of inadequacy pops into your existence.

Gratitude is the most powerful word in the English Dictionary.

Here is a podcast that I did back in 2005 for Hunatrainer.com Community Boardcast. It was an interesting moment in my life where I had an epiphany pertaining to relationship and abandonment. I let it go, and with the magic of a song it creates a pretty interesting 15 minutes or so of audio.

 CG019.mp3 Abandonment Issues via HunaTrainer, Sept 2005

Successfully,

Travis Wright

Relaxation Rescue

by Laura M. Turner

Let’s face it, stress is everywhere. It lurks in every corner and around every bend, just waiting to “get” us. And study after study concludes that although some stress can be productive, prolonged stress can lead to chronic illness.

Yet, stress can only “get us” if we let it. If we can agree that the mind and body are interconnected, than I believe you can actually decide to manage stress, take control of it and instantly over-come the negative influences brought to you by your environment.

Now, stay with me for the “clinical” stuff. Scientific evidence supports that the stress of the body comes from the nervous system’s “fight or flight response.” If you haven’t heard this term before, it’s when the body suspects trauma and instantly shifts into “survival mode” based on the stimulus of an oncoming stress factor. This “survival mode” response, does terrible things to the body including increasing heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, muscle tension. These are the bad boys that can lead to harmful changes over time.

Now for the good news: you can teach your body not to make the shift into survival mode. Do this by retraining your body to create its own relaxation response. How? Begin by incorporating these three proven relaxation rescue techniques into your own life:

Meditation:
Meditation provides an escape from stress as it refocuses the mind on something else - most often the breath. The benefits of meditation counteract the negative stress-responses by creating a mode of deep inner peace and physical health. It does this by slowing the heart rate and lowering the blood pressure. It also includes many other benefits including those of anti-aging.
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Why do Some People Consistently Inspire Others to Follow Their Lead?

John C. Maxwell is world renowned for his knowledge of leadership, and his book, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader (published by Thomas Nelson, 1999), is clearly the place to get started. But first, let’s start with a simple question: Why do some people consistently inspire others to follow their lead? According to John C. Maxwell, it is the “character qualities” they possess. In The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, he identifies these top traits and then defines them in ways that readers can absorb and utilize. View PDF excerpt

Each character trait is covered in a separate chapter and contains relevant quotes and anecdotes, details on its meaning, suggestions for further reflection, and exercises for improvement. In essence, John provides a mini-course in each quality. So what are the 21 indispensable qualities? They are listed below:

1. CHARACTER: Be a Piece of the Rock
2. CHARISMA: The First Impression Can Seal the Deal.
3. COMMITMENT: It Separates Doers from Dreamers.
4. COMMUNICATION: Without It You Travel Alone.
5. COMPETENCE: If You Build It, They Will Come.
6. COURAGE: One Person with Courage Is a Majority.
7. DISCERNMENT: Put an End to Unsolved Mysteries.
8. FOCUS: The Sharper It Is, the Sharper You Are.
9. GENEROSITY: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another.
10. INITIATIVE: You Won’t Leave Home Without It.
11. LISTENING: To Connect with Their Hearts, Use Your Ears.
12. PASSION: Take This Life and Love It.
13. POSITIVE ATTITUDE: If You Believe You Can, You Can.
14. PROBLEM SOLVING: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be a Problem.
15. RELATIONSHIPS: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along.
16. RESPONSIBILITY: If You Won’t Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead the Team.
17. SECURITY: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity.
18. SELF-DISCIPLINE: The First Person You Lead Is You.
19. SERVANTHOOD: To Get Ahead, Put Others First.
20. TEACHABILITY: To Keep Leading, Keep Learning.
21. VISION: You Can Seize Only What You Can.

Printed with permission of Dr. John C Maxwell

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