Thankful Every Day
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(Lose the Net by Rasmus Faber Courtesy of Epidemic Music)
It constantly amazes me that good questions lead so naturally to good answers, and that beautiful questions lead to even better answers! Each time we open ourselves to the things we don’t know, we’ve opened the doors to discovery and wonder and greater understanding.
I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that matter every day.
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In this week of Thanksgiving celebration, it’s good to stop and remember the things we’re grateful for.
Join me this week as we take another look at gratitude and what happens when we stay focused there. Stay with me.
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Like any schoolboy, I heard numerous stories about the Pilgrims settling at Plymouth rock and how they celebrated their first successful harvest with indigenous people in sixteen twenty-one. But as Thanksgiving comes and goes, I don’t spend much time thinking about them. I’ll leave it for the historians to sort out fact from fiction.
On the other hand, I make a conscious effort to spend time thinking about the uncountable blessings in my life and in the lives of the people I care about.
With the passing of each year, I grow more thankful, and I find so much to be thankful for, even when the world is in chaos. I hadn’t thought about how obvious it has become, but in the past few weeks, several people have asked how I can be so positive in the face of all that’s happening and looking back on all I’ve endured in my lifetime. The answer is an elegantly simple one.
I focus on the things I’m thankful for. It’s a conscious choice we can make over and over.
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It’s not that I’m ignoring what’s happening locally or on the global stage. And I’m certainly not turning a blind eye to the suffering that’s taking place every day. I’m keenly aware of those things and I remain inescapably concerned about them. Yet, if I’m to live meaningfully from one day to the next, and if I’m to respond in healthy ways, it’s extremely important that I keep my focus on things that lift and nourish and restore and heal me from the inside out.
High on the list is gratitude.
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photo: Scott Lennox
Study any of the major religions and you’ll find gratitude or thankfulness to be regarded among the highest virtues. The implication is to stop and be mindful, giving conscious thought to the good things or the blessings or the gifts that have been received. However, as I consider that, I have to admit that there’ve been far too many times when I was so busy trying to get from one day to the next that I gave precious little thought to the countless ways I’ve been blessed. In those days, it was easier to notice the things I struggled with or was pushing against.
Perhaps you can relate.
While it may seem paradoxical at first glance, it turns out that it was the struggles and the pushing through that finally brought me to a place where I had no option but to stop and savor the good things. It was gratitude for even the smallest of things that helped me get through what I was experiencing without collapsing under the weight of it.
Come to think of it, until I wrote that statement just now, I never considered thankfulness to act like a buoyancy device, but metaphorically speaking, that wouldn’t be an exaggeration at all. Like a slow and freshening breath, gratitude lifts me and helps keep me afloat, bringing me back into the moment and realigning my perspective and the ways I am seeing myself and my circumstance in healthier ways.
Each time I take a moment to remember the good things in my life (some of which are quite small and some of which are so immenstible that they are nothing short of miraculous), something in me relaxes a bit and I can feel the tension I’ve been holding begin to let go. Invariably, each time that happens, my thinking gets a little clearer and my mood becomes easier and lighter.
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As you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I wonder how much richer your experience might be if you were to write a list of all the things you are grateful for. I wonder how long your list will be and what will come to mind that you hadn’t thought about or noticed in a while. I also wonder what will shift or change in you.
This week’s Beautiful Questions are designed to help you do exactly that.
Question One: What good things can you celebrate or be thankful for today that you haven’t consciously been paying attention to?
Question Two: What good things have happened or been offered to you in the past that you may have tucked away or forgotten, and how might you stop to recognize them?
Question Three: What are you willing to do to make gratitude a part of your everyday habit, noticing the good things as they happen and making a place for them in your awareness?
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I invite you to sit with these questions and to write and tell me what comes to mind as you do. I’m thankful to be able to share this with you and that we are partners in making our lives a little better today.
As I say each time,
My Light with Your Light!
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I’m happy we can engage this way as we consider things that matter and what to do about them. If nothing else, I hope you feel inspired to look more deeply at ways of caring for yourself.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. We’ve also included an archive of all previous podcasts, including guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, I encourage you to share them and tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world. It’s a great way of spreading peace.
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
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The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.