Look at me!  I’m BLOGGING!!  I am so grateful for this age we live in…the technology, the communication, the diversity, the creativity…I am just in awe of the committment and imagination that has gone into producing the world we live in.  THAT is primarily what this blog is going to address: how simply living in gratitude can not only change your life but change the world.

It’s really fitting that this Blog is launching during Thanksgiving week.  You see…I have always thought that I was pretty darn good in the gratitude department.  Working as I have in my Social Work career with HIV positive foster children, homeless mentally ill veterans, immigrants, suicidal teens, drug addicts, abused women, cancer patients, gangs in Brooklyn…you get the picture…it’s pretty easy to list my own humble blessings on a day to day basis.  So I always took the time to send thank you cards, give beautiful gifts, phone a friend, tithe to my congregation, bless my food, and spend time with others.  It was easy to do…until I started falling on hard times myself.

When you see yourself as living in Abundance, it is easy to be thankful; when you see yourself as living in Lack…not so much.  But, I am here to tell you, that is EXACTLY the time you need your gratitude attitude the most, when you are struggling to make ends meet, when you lose your job, when you become disabled, when your kids are sick, when you are faced with forclosure…that is when you are challenged to be grateful.  I confess I lost that attitude for a while…and became confused as to why the Lack was growing.  Silly Girl…I know it now…it’s because I stopped Focusing on the Abundance!

Here’s a Universal Law for you: what you think about, you bring about.  It’s more than a simple cause and effect mantra.  It’s a real, palpable, tangible, law.  Like attracts like.  When you concentrate on what you love…more of what you love shows up in your life…when you concentrate on what you don’t love…you get more of that too.  It sounds etheral and New Agey to say it like this but there is proof in psychotherapy – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy teaches us that the only thing you have total control over are your thoughts…not your feelings not even your actions.  So changing the way you think will change your emotional state and the way you behave.  Changing your emotional state affects the way the world sees you and the way you interact with the world.

Who do you hang out with?  Are they positive people – encouraging, joyful, fearless and kind? Or are they downers - cynical, sarcastic, petty, always “too tired” and maybe even rude?  Here’s the tougher question – are they like you?  How do you feel when you are around truly positive people?  (Do you even know any?) Do you feel lighter? or do you feel stressed?  In psychotherapy, the traits I listed of the negative people are called Defenses.  They are walls put up to defend the person’s subconscious from being challenged.  In other words, they stagnate growth.  They discourage Abundance.  They promote Lack.  Negative people create a small world for themselves to survive in and repel Abundance from coming in.  Positive people create an ever expanding world to play in and invite Abundance to tea every day!

Here’s a comic statement for you…ready?  “I’m not negative…I’m just a realist!”  HA!!!!!!!!!!!  A realist is able to deal effectively, quickly and gracefully (meaning without drama) with the bumps in the road as the arise (and they will) with an Attitude of Gratitude.  A realist can do this because they know that the reality is that they are completely and utterly responsible  for what comes NEXT AND they know they have the power to change their situation.  It is the negative person, the pessimist, that deals with the same negative issues over and over and over again, using the same complaints, the same excuses and the same negativity…which includes shifting responsibility to something or someone else.  Do you know realists or pessimists?  We had a saying in psychotherapy – INSANITY is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.   If you want to CHANGE what you’ve got in your life…you need to CHANGE what you’ve got in your life…HOW?…

Back to Gratitude…this is the first essential step to living a more positive life attracting more positive people and inviting more Abundance into your life.   Gratitude is not just a feeling, it is a lifestyle choice.  It is purposeful and takes commitment and practice.  But it immediately lightens your spirit and brings joy.  The great thing is that when YOU express gratitude, it not only affects you, it affects those around you…and since like attracts like, guess what happens next! Life is good!

So I am on a mission to live in greater gratitude and become reacquainted with my old friend, Abundance.  I hear she has always been out there waiting for me to call.  I also hear she is bigger, more beautiful and more fun than ever!  All I need to do is shine my light of gratitude…she will see me as long as I do not hang out in the fog of self-doubt, guilt, pessimism, sarcasm, revenge and fear.  And she’ll say with a smile – “Hey, Denise!  I missed you!  Like my new shoes? Let’s go dancin’!”

Have a brilliantly blessed Thanksgiving!  And THANK YOU for taking the time to visit!