The Best Day of the Year

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year because it is so simple.  All you have to do is share the day with people you love, eat good food, and be thankful.  It is a day for giving thanks, a day for gratitude.

Gratitude is the most essential tool in creating a joyful life.  And it is one of the few things of which you can never have too much.  There are three powerful tools for creating more gratitude in your life: willingness, focus and perspective.

Willingness is the key to all change.  Most people want at least something in their life to be different.  But wanting and willingness are two different things.  Willingness is the oomph that moves you from desire to action.  It requires that you do something different or differently than you have been doing.  It often requires that you tolerate discomfort (mental, spiritual, or physical).  It always requires allocation of time and energy.

Focus is where you shine the light.  Imagine all is darkness.  Focus is the place you aim your flashlight.  In every person's life there is an infinite number of possibilities on which to shine the light.  We are always choosing our focus.  The quality of our lives is often determined by the direction of our focus.

Perspective is about interpreting the subject of our focus.  Human beings are incessant interpreters.  We assign meaning to everything.  We tend to believe that the things (people, places, events, circumstances, etc) have their own inherent meanings, but this is an illusion.  WE assign meaning.  And at any time, we are free to change that meaning.  THAT is perspective.

Let me illustrate with a short story from my childhood.  I was ten, my brothers were 9 and 12, and my stepsister was 4.  We were playing a football game along with my Stepmother.  Boys against the girls.  We girls had the ball and we drew up a play to give 4 year old Cathy the football and Renee (my stepmother) and I would block the boys to give Cathy a straight shot to the end zone.  It worked perfectly except that Cathy got turned around somehow and ran to the wrong endzone, resulting in a touchdown for the boys.  I lost it.  I was screaming, "Not fair, not fair, do over, do over." I was over the edge upset.  Meanwhile everyone else was rolling on the ground laughing.  My focus was on the scoreboard in my head that had just rung up 6 points for the boys; and my perspective was that this was a calamity!  The rest of my family was focused on the fun of the game and their perspective was that it had just gotten hysterically funny.  They were all having a much better time than I was.  The facts were the same for all.  The focus and perspectives determined the level of enjoyment.

In these days leading up to Thanksgiving Day, I invite you to investigate what YOU focus on in your life.  In any given day you can focus on what drives you nuts or you can focus on the things for which you are grateful.  Your experience of your day will be determined by your focus and perspective.  Are you willing to shift your focus in order to experience more joy in your life???  And here's something else to consider: whatever you focus on you create more of (yes I know that is a dangling preposition - feel free to laugh about it!)  Happy Thanksgiving to you all.