What's Different?

For me, I see Thanksgiving as just another day.  Why?  I choose to be thankful for everything year round.  It’s called the gratitude lifestyle.  It’s a different way of thinking and different way of life.  I choose to focus on being thankful for everything in and around my life.  It starts with a simple thank you when I wake up, then thank you for moving, to thank you for that breathing thing working again today, to thank you for the hot SB coffee, to thank you for the gas in the truck, and on and on. 

The gratitude lifestyle is not to say that everything is rosy and peachy 100% of the time.  There are times when things in my life just stink.  I still have moments of being pissed off, sad, mad, hurt, etc.  The difference in the gratitude lifestyle is seeing those events as opportunities to learn something from it rather than allowing it to consume my life with negative nonsense, which serves no purpose. 

I get pissed because someone cut me off in traffic.  The learning opportunity is to work on my patience in traffic.  Someone hurts my feelings.  The learning opportunity is to be thankful I have feelings to hurt, as at one time, I had shut down all emotions where I felt nothing.  I was having a beer the other night, and there was an extremely noisy person in the bar.  Mind you, there were only four of us there, and she was so loud that I could not even talk to the bartender.  I felt myself entering the spin cycle.  Rather than let the cycle finish, I paid out and left.  The learning opportunity was to take myself out of the situation rather than allow the situation to overtake me.  I have a little blurb I read each day that helps me, “Change your thinking, change your world.”  What lifestyle do you choose to live?