GRATITUDE

What is Gratitude?

Gratitude is all about not just being or saying thank you. It is a feeling. It is a feeling beyond your emotion, which is inside your heart that flowers when you are very grateful and cannot equate it to anything materialistic for the help or support or guidance or some input given by somebody or through somebody that you get and you go to the next immediate step in your life. It can be even a bottle of water or a small tumbler of water that somebody gives you when you're thirsty. Gratitude comes from the heart willingly, not mind. It is just not a concept. It is the personality in itself. It shows various characters and the most important is your humility.

Humility and gratitude come in when you start accepting the situation as it is and do not have expectations or even your wants. Even in your prayers, even in looking at somebody, the way that you look at somebody can be with gratitude. Gratitude comes automatically to many people who have gone through a lot of pain in their life. Pain teaches us very many things. People talk about emotional stability. Even I, in my coaching, talk about emotional intelligence.

Why Gratitude?

You have to. I mean, instances of pain induce gratitude in every person's life. Our karma lingers. We start somewhere and our journey, though we think of something, cannot be enhanced if we are not grateful for what we have first. I had a very tough childhood and the disciplined upbringing and orthodoxical input of the environment that I was in. There was no lifestyle as such and when I looked at the people around me, they were already my friends. They were having a great lifestyle. First, leave out the other things. So that which was highly missing was that innate happiness and livelihood. The only problem I had was I was not grateful for the life that I had. I was not grateful to my parents who brought in that discipline. I did not even see what I had. I was always looking for something that I did not have.

When you keep seeing things that you do not have, you will never be grateful for or you will never realize the value of what you have.

How to Be Grateful

Sweetheart, why be grateful? Make gratitude your nature. It's not even your second nature. Your first nature. The moment you enter somewhere, the moment you even step into a grocery store, you step out of your house. You have your people around, they talk to you. You both laugh at each other. You, all of you sit and watch TV. There is a cook that comes to your home. There is a maid who works or you, with your own body, do so many things.

The moment you start gossiping, the moment you start outpouring, the moment you say, "What life is this?" That is the moment that you need to change your tone, your language, your words, your thoughts, and majorly, your intentions. To say that, "Wow, I am grateful that I at least have this." Gratitude is something that you need to compare yourself with the person who doesn't have what, even what you have. It is not comparing literally, but at least being aware of what you have concerning people who do not have that. What if you did not have that? Also, what would have happened to you?

Think of something. When you look at others bigger than you, you need to develop the attitude of knowledge and learning and experience and be grateful to know about people, to know about the next level lifestyle, but not get jealous. The moment you are jealous, all the goodness, all the good intentions, the gratitude that you have paid vanishes. And you have to start from zero. Expand your heart, expand your purpose. Expand your innate qualities. Expand what you have to cover what you do not have.

Conclusion

Gratitude is not a skill. It's not an art. It is the person that you are. Become the person with a lot of gratitude within your heart. For everything that is happening to you, around you, for you, in you, through you, and by you. This is your strength. This is your power of surrender. This is the power of your acceptance. Above all, this is the power of your love.