This is in my top ten favorite articles. Ten practical ways to develop gratitude - I have used it a ton.
"The grateful heart sits at a continual feast."
I was
sitting behind two teenage girls on a bus. One of them was upset because
her parents had balked at buying her a prom dress they couldn’t afford.
She was not happy with her second choice.
“Then
Mom came unglued because I didn’t say thank you,” she complained. “I
don’t know what she expected me to say thank you for!” Ungrateful child, I thought.
Not long after that I began pondering the promise of “a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it” (3 Ne. 24:10). Although I had been paying my tithing
and fulfilling my other obligations, I did not feel overwhelmed with
blessings. In fact, I felt that I had little to be grateful for.
Suddenly,
my experience on the bus flashed through my mind. I, too, had been an
ungrateful child. I began to think about my life, and, first as a
trickle and then increasing to a torrent, there came to me a powerful
awareness of the blessings I had received. From tiny everyday blessings
to the great blessing of the Atonement, I saw how abundantly I had been
blessed. The windows of heaven had been open all the time. I just hadn’t
noticed. My soul filled with such wonder and gratitude that I felt physically unable to bear it.
That
night I understood for the first time that when gratitude fills our
hearts, there is no room for unhappiness. Happiness, I decided, does not
depend on obtaining all the desires of our hearts. It does not have to
wait until we get married or become parents or acquire material goods.
Happiness depends in large measure on our ability to feel gratitude for
the abundance we already have.
No comments:
Post a Comment