Gratitude

Very rarely people that aren’t grateful are happy. And often people that think they are grateful, but aren’t, get frustrated, confused and end up thinking that the law of attraction is bullshit. Being grateful isn’t as easy as saying, “I’m grateful for this or that.” Being grateful isn’t attributing something or someone your reason for being grateful. Achieving a state of Gratitude is being grateful weather you have or don’t have the situation/person/event that’s causing you to be grateful for. Although practicing being grateful is a great way towards happiness, it alone won’t bring you any closer. You see, being grateful is being in a permanent state of complete acceptance, and therefore receptiveness. Can you direct gratitude towards something and still be grateful when your object of gratitude is taken away? Often that’s not the case. If you are grateful for the great job that you have, would you still be grateful if you were fired? Probably not. We can and should be grateful for an array of things in our life, and that is a great practice towards achieving the complete state, but just because I am grateful, for example, the food I have, that doesn’t necessarily make me a grateful person, and that alone is not going to make me happy. In order to achieve a state of gratefulness, I would have be as grateful all the same if i didn’t have food. The minute my object of gratitude goes away I feel ungrateful, because deep down we tend to have a sense of entitlement, and entitlement precludes gratitude. Yes I am grateful that I do have food but for me to be a Grateful person I have to be as grateful if and when I don’t. And only when we are able to attain this state can we truly be happy. As with gratitude, being happy , being truly happy isn’t dependent on a condition. Gratitude leads to happiness, when we are grateful for everything, and this is the goal, we must be aware that this means we will be happy regardless if your parents get sick and die, regardless if your children die, if you are grateful for everything, you will still be happy when your car breaks down and you have to wait 24 hours for help, you will still be happy if you don’t have money to replace it, if you are grateful for everything then you are truly happy, and will still be so if you don’t have money, or food, or friends, or a family, you will still be grateful if your spouse cheats on you, you will be happy regardless. When, or rather IF, we ever achieve true happiness, none of the things we deem negative will interrupt that flow. Because nothing will be seen negative anymore. Everything will just be. Everything with be seen as a circumstance which must. Practice gratitude little steps at a time, test your gratitude and your level of happiness by focusing on one object/person/event at the time, be grateful for them, always, but then question if you can still be happy when you picture yourself without it. I doubt we will ever be truly happy, but you know what, even if you can’t accept the big tragedies, at least don’t sweat the small stuff. And the small stuff really is the majority so there is a lot of potential to come close to true happiness. Stay Gracefully grateful.