“Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you.”
~Eileen Caddy

I often reflect on what got me from my troubled childhood to this point in my life where I have so many people who love me, great abundance and so much joy!  I always feel that my optimism and resilience are the character traits that have helped me the most.

But I wonder if having gratitude as a foundation may have been why the optimism and resilience developed.  If you are grateful for what you have you are less likely to be expecting the worse.

Gratitude is more than the act of saying "thank you."  It's a state of mind that endures.  It's an attitude that prevails over hardship.  It's a proactive way of approaching life.  You just can't be angry or resentful and grateful at the same time!

So, how does one develop this attitude of gratitude if it doesn't come naturally?    Like anything we want to develop or change, the first step is awareness.  Start looking around both your external environment and your inner life.  Name all the things you are grateful for.  Practice being mindful of what you are thankful for.  Even if you worked to attain something, you can be grateful for it. Some people work hard and struggle and don't have that.

As you develop a sense of gratitude it keeps growing.  The more you are grateful for the more you will see to be grateful for.  You will feel yourself gradually becoming happier and more satisfied with your life.  And it doesn't stop there.  It is contagious.  Your gratefulness will affect those around you.  

This is a digital gratitude collage I did.

Coming very soon!

I am making some great Photoshop tutorial videos.  They are developed for mixed media artists and show just the basics to get you started quickly.

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on Fridays for our great podcasts. I've got some wonderful interviews coming up that I think you'll enjoy

Because I seem to be pretty much stuck in childlike mode, I am not drawn to much of anything that isn't fun.  So my answer to this question is "yes"!

Make it a game to find as many things as possible to be grateful for.  I remember one of the darkest times of my life when it was hard to find anything to be happy about.  One day it occurred to me that the worst thing that could happen would be if I found out I was pregnant.  So every day I felt gratitude that I wasn't. 

If you are the competitive type and have a friend that's willing, you can challenge them to see who can find the most things to be grateful for.  Be aware of the possibility of this becoming  a "my life sucks worse than yours" contest.  The idea is to win by having the most blessings.

Start a gratitude journal.  You can simply write down what you are grateful for.  It works well for me to write at the end of each day all the blessings I can count for that day.  It's fun to find magazine pictures to represent the things you're grateful for, making a gratitude collage.

Last week we made Dreamboards.  The same concept can be applied here.  Make a poster of all the things in your life that you are grateful for.  It would be interesting to make one now and make another in three months.  I will bet that the one you make three months from now will be much larger!