Gratitude - A Secret Everyone Should Know

"Thank you" is just two words, simply eight letters. It takes one second to say thank you and the power behind it is life changing. Not for me the T-shirt that says "Thank you doesn't pay the bills!" This is one of the oldest lies of all. Rudeness keeps you down in life, but an attitude of gratitude makes you a winner in all life circumstances.

Even when life seems hard and you have to struggle, there is usually a lesson in the struggle if we look deeply enough. If everything came easy would we really be living in Paradise or would we become crazy with boredom? Empires fall in prosperous times....

So what does "The Secret" say about gratitude I hear you asking? I have one answer for you all and it is this. Regardless of the wording in "The Secret" every practitioner of it, whether or not they have read the book, knows Gratitude is the Master Key!

The Seven Deadly Sins are:

Lust, Gluttony, Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Avarice

I'm sure that at some time in our lives we all experience one or more of these.
According to the Catholic Church there are seven redeeming virtues which oppose the deadly sins;

Chastity, Moderation, Modesty, Charity, Meekness or Patience, Labour. Generosity.
Applying gratitude in our daily lives is an easy stepping stone to those virtues.

What makes you look older? Worry, stress, anger - all these things plough furrows into the brow and the face. Unlike laughter lines which even young people have, these lines age us. What does gratitude do to help?

The skin is the first part of the body to reveal stress and illness because it is an organ of excretion and defence. Gratitude is a huge stress reliever.

Looking for the positive in each situation helps us to act positively rather than brood helplessly. Rather than worry about your loved ones being ill, you can do more good by showing gratitude that they are with us still.

Stress is another word for fear - learning to accept a situation or outcome without paralyzing fear comes through the practice of gratitude. Anger is a deadly sin because it hurts all equally. There really is no such thing as righteous anger. Anger expressed physically causes harm, anger repressed causes illness. Exercising patience is the antidote, but practising gratitude stops anger that is simply repressed. A person who behaves in an annoying way for us might be quite amusing or loveable to others, so where is the fault? Gratitude helps us learn this lesson.

So, if Anger, Envy or Avarice are causing you stress, they are filling you with stress hormones which will certainly age you and make you ill. That is a fact that medical science upholds every day. If practising gratitude in our lives relieves those stresses we will live longer! If we are grateful for what we have, we are less likely to be driven by Envy or Avarice, both or which are like chronic open sores. When good things happen we should say thank you - in fact there are those who believe that saying thank you to God or the Universe for what we desire in our lives will result in it materializing!

In Buddhist thought, happiness that is based on material acquisitions is like a temple built on quicksand. In this moment I am glad to be alive and well, and as you read these words I hope that you are too! All we have is the present moment. We can lose possessions, we can lose money, we can lose people, we can lose our health or even our lives but right now we have everything we need to be happy. (Including, most importantly, a sense of humour you will find!) Gratitude reminds us what truly matters.

Have you ever noticed how some people just seem to get in better in life? They are not necessarily the brightest or the best, but they make it anyway. Sometimes they make it through hard labour, but even so you can work incredibly hard and be sour-faced about it and you get nowhere. Often the people who make it give back! They are sociable, they are easy to get along with, they know how to "make friends and influence people", they know how to give without a second thought. Saying thank you is a step along that route - it is paying it along!

Gratitude is a surefire cure for the blues! As a teenager I was unlucky in love - as most teenagers are - even to the extent of being nearly suicidal. One evening I met a young man in his twenties who was confined to a wheelchair by a crippling disease. His cheerfulness and positivity woke me up. He was grateful to be alive and I learned a huge lesson by observing this. So I couldn't have the partner of my dreams? Big deal! I had a lot more besides and later I found out that a greater love was waiting for me just to let go of obsession and be grateful for the good things and the love I had surrounding me.

Everyone loves a winner! But what does that mean? Does everyone love the richest businessman on the planet? No! Does everyone love the fastest runner in the world? Probably not! So who is a winner? A winner is someone who knows he is a winner! The lure of that inner peace and contentment makes him nice to know and spend time with. A winner is genuinely happy for other people's achievements and good luck. A winner shares good fortune with those around him. A winner is not self-cherishing, but is a living reminder of the power of gratitude to produce the best in people. Are you a winner? Now that is something to be thankful for!

If by now you are looking around yourself and seeing the good things you are blessed with, then we are halfway there. If you are practising gratitude for the lessons the less than good things have to teach us, you are getting closer. If instead you are thinking I have lost it and what on Earth have you to be grateful for then your life is neither carefree nor abundant. My guess is, without that attitude of gratitude it probably will be always just a little worrisome and dreary. Me? I find it hard to practise every day, but for now I am just singing in the rain!

I want you to smile, because I know that you know the best way to make others smile is to smile at them. I know it is hard to be unhappy when you smile. How many times have you seen someone cry, listened sympathetically for hours and then at some point something you said accidentally made them laugh? Even if only for a minute the sun breaks through. Happiness can become a new habit, gratitude is a bold step to happiness! Thank you for smiling!

Well now that's the big one! Practitioners of "The Secret" promise us this can happen, along with anything else we care to create for ourselves. If you have gotten this far you will either be thanking I am barking mad, wearing rose-tinted spectacles, or perhaps there is something in this whole Thank You experience that is worth trying out in life. Thank you for reading this far!

It's free, it's in plentiful supply and you can start right now....

The secret? It's Gratitude! Spread the word!