Thankful: conscious of benefit received (from Webster dictionary online)
Grateful: appreciative of benefits received
Those words are so close in meaning. As we just celebrated Thanksgiving, I have been thinking of those 2 words. I try every day to write 3 things for which I am grateful. (I am beyond grateful for my 3 daughters in the photo above.) I have been doing this practice for at least 2 years, possibly longer. I am not successful every day, but the majority of the week I get my gratefulness written down. I started out writing “Thankful for:” and then I would list the 3 things that came to my mind. I don’t know where the change happened – I will have to look someday. One morning as I started to write, my pen wrote the word “grateful” instead of “thankful”. I looked up the meaning of the two words, as I listed at the beginning of this post. I feel that grateful has a deeper inner feeling!
As we wind down 2021 and look forward to an awesome 2022, I will continue to focus on that for which I am grateful…I challenge you to do so as well! When you take just a little time every day to be grateful for the little things (which really everything is a big thing as they impact our lives), you begin to look at life through a different lens. Am I suggesting I am always chipper, 100% positive and never have a rough day…nope not at all
However, when I sit down early in the morning and scribe my grateful list, my perspective shifts. Here are a few examples of “small” and “big” items for which I am grateful: the glow of Christmas lights, the beautiful sunrise, the first drink of coffee, my mom still feeling well while fighting cancer for almost 2 years. The glow of Christmas lights is small in comparison to my mom’s health. However, each give me joy and a sense of peace and gratefulness.
Are you thankful? Are you grateful? Think about those words and choose one to use each day as you reflect on the goodness in your life. My hope is that you write them down and have them to go back to when needed. My other hope is that the process of writing them down just brings you a little bit of joy every day.
I choose to be grateful.
Thanks for stopping by!
WEAR THE PERFUME!
Linda
