Thanksgiving is a chance to practice being thankful.
Recently, my eldest daughter was sick with covid. It wasn’t a particularly great time for her being ill as holidays were coming up and their trip abroad with dad was booked. I, in turn, had way too much on my plate to be able to stay home and be sick, not to mention a small dog that no one else was going to walk for me. “I have no time to be sick!” was my usual retort when friends and relatives inquired concerned about our health. While my younger one could hide out in other rooms of the house, as a mother, my first job was to care for my children and ensure they got well. Hence I spent much time in looking after my daughter putting her health concerns above mine.
It’s interesting how we tend to pay more attention to something when it’s missing than when it’s as and where we expect it to be. As a Nutritional Therapist, I spend most of my time these days dealing with health in one way or another, always aware of what is out there health wise and doing my best to ensure optimum health for me and my family, along with for my clients. But while I ensure that we all live a healthy lifestyle and eat a mostly healthy diet at home, I don’t focus specifically in on our health until something isn’t working.
Isn’t this how most of us have lived up until the Corona crisis began? Health was something we didn’t pay much attention to when we had it. It wasn’t a particular concern for most until suddenly the entire world was presented with a health crisis that no one knew exactly how to get out of. Suddenly, all of society, including all the normal rules of living were changed to protect what few had even considered much before: health.
For me, confronted with health issues of my children, my immediate instincts of someone constantly studying the latest in wellness and health instantly kicked in. I learned more about how to heal Corona quickly by trying it out on my daughter. I learned more about protecting the rest of us in the family from becoming sick by trying remedies out on myself and my youngest. As it happens, my experiments proved highly successful for our small family. My sick daughter was very quickly better, while myself and the other child managed to stay healthy and not get sick. The children were able to go away on holidays as planned and my dog didn’t have to miss any of his usual walks.
Whether it was due to my knowledge of nutrition or due to my persistent focus on keeping my family healthy, we were luckier than most and came through Corona relatively unscathed. I was grateful for the health we’d protected up to that point and I added a gratitude meditation and thanked the universe again for the journey that brought me to the direct awareness of the importance of health that happened before the entire world began suffering from this serious health epidemic that has claimed so many.
These days media and news of all kinds focuses in on fear, not on hope. So that everyone walks around being scared of being sick rather than grateful for being healthy. As a believer of the Law of Attraction, I can see how what we focus on tends to be what is realised. This focus is true for the use of language as well. Gratitude should be used abundantly in both the way you think and the way you speak.
According to the Law of Attraction, we tend to attract what we think, whether it is positive or negative and whether it is thought consciously or even very unconsciously. Hence, focusing on the fear of becoming ill is exactly what gives strength to the growth of illness. Gratitude is a way to turn that feeling of fear on its’ heel and to force us to look for that which we value and for what we do have. Once we realise what we have, we can then work better to protect it. Hence we begin to look after our health not because we fear losing it but because we want to keep healthy for as long as possible. And if not already healthy, focusing on health helps to bring us closer towards what we want (not what we lack).
Now that we’re soon to celebrate the American holiday of Thanksgiving, it’s a wonderful time to focus on learning how to focus on the art of being thankful, as it is in fact an art. Learning to look for what we like rather than focusing on what we lack or what we fear is something that most don’t do naturally but need to learn to.
The upcoming festive holidays and the New Year, is a great time to think about what we value most in our lives and in the people that we are close to. When I spend time thinking about what annoys me about my kids, they seem to become more annoying. However, as soon as I consider the many aspects of their unique and interesting personalities that I adore, I suddenly realise again just how special they are, and how grateful I am for having them.
Gratitude has the magic ability to help us see the world through rose-coloured glasses, suddenly becoming keenly aware of how beautiful and wonderful it really is. Wouldn’t you rather see things that way than through the other glasses that come from complaining and irritation: those that leave your life feeling empty and your soul constantly wanting? Even more so, wouldn’t you rather focus in on what you want more of than what you want less of. Well the choice of focus is up to you, so choose well.
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“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” — Thornton Wilder
~ Julia