Gratitude is one of the things I think we focus on a lot in our lives. We teach our children to say thank you when they receive something, but do we only say thank you when we get something or are we grateful every day for the things we already have in our lives? Some of us do and I think there are also some of us that don’t. We just simply take things for granted.

In times when thing are tough we complain and forget about the current things that we have. We so often focus on the lack in our lives, and that total feeling of emptiness we experience that we do not see the good around us, and the things we can be grateful for. And in times when things go well we so often are grateful and ecstatic about those things. It is then when we go on our knees and praise God for all the good things in our lives, but when it goes bad we forget about the ecstatic moment we experienced and we find ourselves back at square one complaining about the things we don’t have.

True gratitude is when we have a sincere balance between these two emotions. That is when we are grateful for the good and the bad times. If you have to look back at the bad things that happened in your life, right at that very moment you do not understand why things happened the way they did, but if you look back you will realise that you learned and gained from that experience more than you lost. Bad things sometimes happen just to bring us back into perspective and to teach us something.

Most of the times we bring the bad things upon ourselves. For example I work hard. My work is perfect and my boss praises me for my good work and my dedication. This makes me feel good and at some stage it goes to my head and I think that I cannot do anything wrong. Then comes that day that I lose focus because what can go wrong? I am perfect and so is my work and I miss a minor detail that has disastrous effects and everything suddenly goes wrong. The boss is upset and I look like a total idiot. This is all my own fault. The bad things in life are there to just bring us back to mother earth and help us to get a bit of perspective again.

True gratitude is there to maintain a balance between being grateful for the good that we receive , but also to be grateful for the lessons we learn when things are not always going our way even if we cannot see the good at that very moment. True gratitude is also saying thank you to the things I already have and so often take for granted.  It is saying thank you even if you don’t have the perfect life you so badly want. In everyday there is something to be grateful for even if it is just the fact that you are alive today.

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