Exactly, Joshua.
This is what I alluded to in my blog post yesterday when I stated that I did not get upset at all when I spilled half a cup of hot coffee. These types of practices change how we respond to our environment.
One of my favorite teachings is that while we cannot always control what happens to us, we always have the choice of how we will respond to what happens. Meditation and gratitude both help us to reach the point where we begin to react in ways that our in line with our beliefs, with who we are striving to be.
They also help us when we fall short of our ideals, to pick ourselves back up (ideally without beating ourselves up) and return to the direction we have chosen for ourselves.
As I have also written about in our gratitude blog, there are mornings when I do not remotely want to get up and start the days chores. When that happens though my gratitude practice always kicks in and reminds me how much I have to be grateful for (I don’t want to go make breakfast? I focus on how grateful I am to have a kitchen to cook in and food to cook) and my mindset is instantly changed and I am able to move on with positive rather than negative emotions.
Doreen