To say that gratitude changed my life would be an understatement.  I don’t recall the year that it began for me but I started hearing little whisperings about gratitude and this magical, little seed called gratitude, was planted.  I often listened to Oprah’s radio show “Soul Series” in the mornings while I was getting ready for work.  One day the interview was with Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of Simple Abundance.  Oprah spoke about one of the concepts in this book that had changed her life, gratitude.   Sarah Ban Breathnach, details how using a gratitude journal can help you see your life in a different way…. And I was in need of seeing my life in a different way.  I bought the book, Simple Abundance, and I bought myself a gratitude journal.  Each night I would wrap up my day by sitting down and contemplating the top 5 things I was grateful for that had happened that day.  I challenged myself to be specific and have a different list every night.  This brilliant woman was so right, in just a short period of time I began to see things differently in my life.  My soul was beginning to awaken to the good, the true and the beautiful that surrounded me…. And the more I had a taste for this the more I wanted!!!

As my gratitude practice continued I began cultivating an invisible connection to something I had never experienced in my life up to this point.  I had been religious my whole life and I thought that was the same as being spiritual….. but what I discovered that for me personally…. These two things were different.  My religion that I was a part of was the culture, the tribe, the collective beliefs of a group I was a part of and my spirituality was my personal beliefs of the world that surrounded me that I participated in.  This included my relationships with people, with nature and all things seen and unseen in my life.  My spirituality was my very personal, very intimate relationship with my personal feelings I was developing for my place in this world and what my personal divinity looked like for me.  I was so grateful for the feeling that this new found spirituality brought to my life…. it felt like an expansion of the human experience into the spiritual experience of being human.  Life began to take on new color, new music, new sensations of all kinds.

I continued my gratitude adventure and experienced more and more miracles as I shifted the way I saw things in my life.  I was able to shift some of the things that I was judging as “bad” and see that these were “opportunities for growth”.  Instead of the “trials and tribulations” I was taught I must endure, I saw the expansion and joy my soul could rejoice in when I made a choice to empower myself towards what I was most grateful for in my life.  Through this practice of gratitude I was able to see that what I focused on the most, in a heartfelt state of gratitude, would expand.  I also experienced the miracle of healed relationships when I focused on the gratitude I felt for another human being and began to see them as a spiritual being having the same choices for “opportunities to grow” that I was experiencing.

Gratitude was the path that led me to joy!  Gratitude was the cozy blanket that comforted me warm when I felt so alone.  Gratitude was the friend that gave me the courage to change the things I could change.  Gratitude was the reminder that this life was worth living…if just for one more day.  Gratitude was the tiny sparkle of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel that brought my soul “home”.  Gratitude was the miracle that changed my life for good.   Simply put,to say that gratitude changed my life is an understatement…… gratitude not only changed my life, it saved my life.  Gratitude gave me the courage to wake up every day and search for just 5 more things that I was grateful for until the day arrived almost mysteriously and miraculously that my list of gratitude could not be contained in a single journal anymore and magically I had a PASSION TO TRULY LIVE!!

I continue to practice gratitude.  When I find a particular rough place in my life it is the tool I turn to first.  I find gratitude in the situation I’m facing.  If I can’t find the gratitude…. I set the intention that I WILL FIND THE GRATITUDE….. and I open my heart to be willing to truly see the gratitude in what I’m facing.   Eventually, it never fails, I find the gratitude for everything in my life because for me personally, this has become my spiritual practice that connects me to something invisible, something all consumed with real love, something bigger than I am, something so true, so beautiful and so good that I want to be a part of it.

I guess you could say that gratitude is my religion, it has become my spiritual practice and it has made all the difference!

And now….. I’m giving GRATITUDE TO YOU!!!!  I’m going to give away one of the books that changed my life.  I’m going to have a drawing for a copy of Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book, Simple Abundance.   To be entered into the drawing that will be held next Saturday, November 14^th at noon MST.  Share this post to your page so we can echo out the magic of gratitude in this wonderful month of Thanksgiving….. then go to my page Redefining Joy and share 5 things you are grateful for today, be specific, feel it in your heart and share this blessed feeling.   Watch for next week’s post about how I attracted over 40 copies of this amazing book with the magic of GRATITUDE!!!  And tune in to our winner!

Thank you!!  Thank you!!  Thank you!!!