How Thankful Are You For The Things You Have?
It’s very easy for us to get flustered with life and believe things will never work out. Last night, I had a very interesting conversation with a dear friend. She’s superbly talented and intelligent. But, life has panned out in a rather difficult way for her. She’s ended up in a job which she doesn’t like, and she feels that her economics background and one-year of insufficient work experience are holding are back while applying for new jobs.
Talking to her, I realised how much she was responsible for what she’s attracted to her. Every job application she was rejected in cited the reasons she feared the most — the fact that she wasn’t an engineer and that she had just one year of relevant work experience.
What came out of this conversation was the lack of gratitude we have for the things we hold in our life and how we can change our life by just changing the way we look at it. It is very simple to love our life, yet why do we make it so difficult for ourselves to love it? I told my friend to do a simple thing every morning — open her mail in a happy mood and think that a recruiter will respond back to her in the affirmative. I feel this method will not just make her happy, it will make her appreciate herself more and understand her worth.
An easy answer for the myriad problems we have in our life can be the lack of gratitude. It is assumed by many that being too thankful for what one has can lead to satisfaction, and in turn, stability. Those who are ambitious fear stability. They always want to feel that fire, that burning urge to never settle for something less. However, the fundamental basis of feeling gratitude is wrong.
Gratitude means being thankful for what you have and being happy for having it when things don’t go your way.
That doesn’t mean one should settle for something lesser. One should always strive to better one’s life. But to better your life, you need to understand the importance of what you have, rather than what you don’t.
It’s easy to look at someone’s life and say — Damn it, I can never have such an amazing life like them, or How the hell is this person always so amazing and happy?
Try talking to these people you admire, and you will notice a common theme running through them all — they all are happy with what they have in life and believe they will always attract the best.
I myself was on a path of self-destruction for many months now. I used to hate my life, in fact wonder what was the purpose of it. But, life played its game with me and brought me to stage where I had to retrospect. I was tired of always being sad and upset, tired of always finding circumstances (and people) to blame for my misery.
Then, I bumped into a friend who had been living in my city for 2 years, yet I had not met him. He told me how he had gone off the grid because he had a major car accident. He was bed-ridden for nine months and doctors had told him that he could never walk again. He was a brilliant mind with a wonderful future ahead of him, but the thought of being a cripple forever haunted him.
He told me how he used those nine months to appreciate all he had around him, especially family, and how he always believed he could walk again. He visualised himself walking. Voila — nine months down the line, he started walking!
I realised I had attracted his experience to me to figure out that my life was beautiful. All I had to do was to change the way I looked at it. Slowly, I started noticing how wonderful the people around me are, how my friends always stood by my side despite all my eccentricities. I was blessed by family that never stopped believing in me and above all, I was a talented and creative person.
If you ever feel depressed and you feel that even if you get out of depression, life won’t be the same again — you’re very much mistaken!
We all get a second chance at life — and with time everything changes.
All you need to do is believe that your life can change. The people around you will change, the circumstances will. It’s tough to think positively when things don’t go your way — it’s logical to feel left out when your colleagues don’t talk to you properly, when someone misbehaves with you, when you fight with someone close to you, or when you lose your job. But, the person who can fight it all is the person who thinks of the good things when things are not going well.
Try and think about what makes you happy — imagine getting an award, or getting married — whatever rocks your boat. But think only of the best. Otherwise, try and be thankful. Thank your life when you wake up every morning. Thank your life because you have a warm bed to sleep in. Thank your friend when they remember you. Thank your life for the freedom you have when you can walk to a bookstore after work because you’re free to do whatever you want.
Life is easy. And it’s beautiful. We have to work hard to get what we want, but don’t you think we should be happy about it? Take each day as it passes and be thankful that you’re getting to live each day as a healthy and happy person. Once gratitude kicks in, you will find little space in your head to think about the bad things that happen to you. Then, you can see how life will change, for the better and only the better. :)

