Seeing ‘what is’

It Will Change Your Life

/ James Browning

On her television show, Oprah Winfrey said: “I will make you one guarantee — if you will be grateful every day, it will change your life… It is almost impossible for it not to improve.

SIX WAYS TO BE GRATEFUL

1. Eagerly look for people and situations for which to be thankful. Pray and listen for the wisdom to recognize how and where you have been blessed.

2. Increase the number of times and the amount of time spent showing and telling others how much you appreciate them. Openly acknowledge those in your life much more frequently than you have in the past. Express gratitude for your spouse, children, siblings, co-workers, relatives, and friends. Actually say your unsaid positive, uplifting thoughts of gratitude rather than keeping them a secret. Email messages of appreciation, recognition, and gratitude to family and co-workers rather than complaints.

3. Privately express, to yourself out loud, ten to fifteen aspects of your life that you are thankful for each day. It is so much more effective when you do this out loud and actually hear yourself with your own voice say these acknowledgments. You can express your gratefulness while driving, walking or even taking a shower.

4. Write five or more statements of gratitude each day in a journal. Review your gratitude journal each week to give you a better perspective of the joy in your life.

5. Develop a Spirit of Gratitude with the purpose of having a change of heart. Receive all things with thankfulness. A Spirit of Gratitude motivates you to think, feel, and behave in ways that are to your highest benefit. Powerfully change your life by cultivating this inner Spirit of Gratitude.

6. Eliminate the ingratitude that has crept into every part of your life. Blaming, criticizing and judging others is so much easier than being thankful. Anger, frustration and fear often blind us to the reality of true blessings. Uncover the traces of ingratitude and its consequences. Interestingly, expressing a series of grateful statements out loud to yourself for several minutes usually empowers you to eliminate negativity and negative energy. A negative state of mind seems more easily maintained than the effort to feel uplifted and grateful. Robert F. Forston, Ph.D. http://www.forstoninstitute.com/gratitude.html

Gratitude works! I am a living example of how learning to truly be thankful is life changing.

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life
is the foundation for all abundance.
Eckhart Tolle

Two Simple and Good Reminders

/ James Browning

“Religion”

Religion is, in reality, living. Our religion is not what we profess, or what we say, or what we proclaim; our religion is what we do, what we desire, what we seek, what we dream about, what we fantasize, what we think – all these things – twenty-four hours a day. One’s religion, then, is ones life, not merely the ideal life but the life as it is actually lived.

Religion is not prayer, it is not a church, it is not theistic, it is not atheistic, it has little to do with what white people call “religion.” It is our every act. If we tromp on a bug, that is our religion; if we experiment on living animals, that is our religion; if we cheat at cards, that is our religion; if we dream of being famous, that is our religion; if we gossip maliciously, that is our religion; if we are rude and aggressive, that is our religion. All that we do, and are, is our religion. From “Columbus and Other Cannibals…” by Jack D. Forbes

“The Good Life”

Living a good life means different things to different people. While there is no specific consensus, there is an ambiguous, mutual understanding. “The good life” is the life that you would like to live broken down to its most basic form. It deals with the simple things that make you happy, the compassionate deeds you perform, the personal goals you strive to achieve, the relationships you nurture and the legacy you leave behind. Sincere personal fulfillment is generally the collective end result.

Another vantage point is “The good life” is also about appreciating all your time, not just your leisure time. Far too many people get caught up in the mad rush of a corporate lifestyle and grow completely numb to the little moments, the simple building blocks of time that make life magical. Time, after all, is the single greatest element of life.

Two simple and good reminders to begin my week: 1) All I do and am today is my ‘religion’ and 2) The ‘good life’ is about appreciating all my time including time spent working. Two little statements; a couple of nuggets of wisdom that will make today a better experience because they are at the front of my consciousness. I am grateful for the reminders.

Nothing is ever enough
when what you are looking for
isn’t what you really want.
Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington

Wisdom In Triplicate

/ James Browning

(1) Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
So love the people who treat you right.
Forget about the one’s who don’t.
Believe things happen for a reason.
If you get a second chance,
grab it with both hands.
If it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy,
they just promised it would be worth it.
Unknown

(2) Remember that things happen for a reason
and if it was meant to be
It wouldn’t have ended.
We should not cry cause it’s gone;
We should be happy that it happened.
Many people touch our lives in different ways;
Some come for a while,
others stay for a season
and show us their magnificent essence
for a purpose and then leave;
And then there’s the people that stay forever,
which ultimately are the ones that count;
so smile and cheer up.
Unknown

(3) Go for long walks,
indulge in hot baths,
question your assumptions,
be kind to yourself,
live for the moment,
loosen up,
scream,
curse the world,
count your blessings,
just let go,
just be.
Carol Shields

Some days my gratitude is general and not specifically focused; its on those mornings that simply being alive seems like such a gift I can’t move to anything more focused. Here at dawn today, I find myself precisely in that spot: flled with thankfulness; brimming with hope; balanced with lessons learned the hard way. I re-typed others words above to remind me of what matters most: life, in all the manners it may come.

Today you are You, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
Dr. Seuss

An Old Cottage of Clay

/ James Browning

When beginning here today my first inclination was to write a piece titled “I am not broken” in reference to myself. I find images can be inspiring, wake feelings within and focus my attention so I often find a few that are good catalysts for the day’s subject. When I searched Google Images for photos relating to not being broken, I was unprepared for what I was about to find.

Growing up I experienced having shoes too small that my parents would split the leather on top so I could still get my feet into them. Clearly I remember wearing worn out shoes with holes in the bottom. But I always I had shoes and realized how lucky I was when I saw the image of the sandals made with flattened plastic bottles and tied on with torn cloth. The photograph pulled me into a dead stare as I fully took in what I was seeing. My eyes watered up.

Down further on the Google image search page was this little under nourished boy crouched down eating bread crumbs off a concrete floor. While my childhood was difficult, I had it really good compared to him.

Then came the little girl with the dirty dress that looked as if it had never been washed. She looks far older than her years and her solemn expression says to me she has likely seen horror far beyond what I can imagine.

The poem just below titled “Poverty” was written by Jane Taylor in the early 1800’s. Now 200 years later not much has changed.

I saw an old cottage of clay,
And only of mud was the floor;
It was all falling into decay,
And the snow drifted in at the door.

Yet there a poor family dwelt,
In a hovel so dismal and rude;
And though gnawing hunger they felt,
They had not a morsel of food.

The children were crying for bread,
And to their poor mother they’d run;
‘Oh, give us some breakfast,’ they said,
Alas! their poor mother had none.

She viewed them with looks of despair,
She said (and I’m sure it was true),
‘’Tis not for myself that I care,
But, my poor little children, for you.’

O then, let the wealthy and gay
But see such a hovel as this,
That in a poor cottage of clay
They may know what true misery is.

And what I may have to bestow
I never will squander away,
While many poor people I know
Around me are wretched as they.

Although I can’t directly affect the lives of the people pictured, I can have empathy for them. By acknowledging their life condition and showing it I take a little step to see they are not completely unknown and forgotten. In spite of their hardships they are not broken and somehow, someway they go doing the best they can. I can’t imagine living a life so grueling and filled with fear. The reminder of how hard life is for so many helped me start my day with a heightened sense of gratitude for how easy and full my life is. Today I won’t complain about a single thing!

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
Mahatma Gandhi

Don’t Waste Any of Your Seconds

/ James Browning

The slow misty fog caused a sparkling halo to surround the street lamps. Each shimmered with scattered rainbow. All I could see was wet with gentle rain that caused everything in view to capture light and glow with color. Only one car passed mine and no wonder, it was 4:55am. The length of my drive to the gym was less than ten minutes, but with heightened awareness I have cultivated, what once would have been hours worth of memories were catalogued in just those few minutes.

I passed a dry cleaner’s sign that with a few bulbs out spelled an unintentional word. Lights were on inside the donut shop and I assumed the bakers were busy in back making sweets for the day’s morning rush.

Stopped at a traffic light a policeman in a cruiser was beside me. He seemed lost in thought staring straight ahead. Maybe he had gone through a difficult and traumatic night. Or maybe he was daydreaming about getting home to crawl into bed next to the one he loved.

Lit up almost like daylight was the big hospital on my left that covers a city block and keeps growing and growing. The wet pink marble glimmered in the spotlights it was being bathed in. Driving past my memory bought up the time when I spent several days in intensive care there.  Thankfulness was immediate that was behind me. The thought was followed by a moment of concern for those whose illness placed them there now and the concerned loved ones of those sick people. For the good health I have, gratitude filled me as I stopped at the last traffic signal before my destination.

Usually  the radio on or a CD playing when driving, but the evening before on the way home I had turned it all the way down to take a phone call. The silence was bordered by the sounds of my car, the rain falling on the windshield and my wipers moving the water side to side. I could hear the friction of my tires against the water on the street; a steady noise that was comforting in some odd way.

My hair was bent and twisted into a bed head style since I had done little before leaving home except dress and make coffee. Sipping on the travel mug as I drove the last quarter-mile the realization came that I had come a long way to not care what someone might think when they saw me with my hair sticking up. I was pleased with my self.

I chose to workout with a trainer very early three times per week because I knew at any other time I would not stay with it consistently. Pulling into the gym parking lot the last seconds of my drive were spent thinking in the silence while  the wet world outside went  by. I was struck by how good my life is. Not perfect; far from it. But good; really good!

Taking the time away from relationships for a few years to truly come to know ‘me’, by myself, enriched my life beyond anything I could have imagined ahead of time. There is a sense of great satisfaction today for having endured what I had to go through to get here. Before my insecurity caused me always need to ‘be with someone’. The loneliness I endured in the recent past to become accustomed to being alone was the single most difficult thing I have ever faced. Today I have a whole heart and a calm soul that is comfortable in this body. Without hesitation I embrace life and am grateful for all its possibilities.

You can be the most beautiful person in the world
and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you,
but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter.
Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
It’s not like you have forever,
so don’t waste any of your seconds,
don’t throw even one of your moments away.
C. Joybell C.

Speak To Me Through Time

/ James Browning

Seneca was a Roman statesman and philosopher during the reign of emperors that history holds as out of control and probably insane, like Caligula and Nero. I have wondered if the craziness he lived through and ultimately claimed his life, contributed to how wise Seneca was. Difficulty and pain has a way of being a good teacher and that seems evident in the thinking he left us, like this just below

True happiness is to enjoy the present,
without anxious dependence upon the future,
not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears
but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient,
for he that is so wants nothing.
The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach.
A wise man is content with his lot,
whatever it may be,
without wishing for what he has not.

Today is one of those days that simple and shortly expressed, but deep gratitude is what I needed to put here. The old philosophers such as Seneca (both the son who wrote what’s above or his father before him), Socrates, Epictetus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Confucius left wisdom behind I am still discovering and finding more truth within the longer I live. I give thanks for the great thinkers who speak to me through time and lend their wisdom now hundreds, even thousands years later.

Just an observation:
It is impossible to be both grateful and depressed.
Those with a grateful mindset tend to see the message in the mess.
And even though life may knock them down,
the grateful find reasons, if even small ones, to get up.
Steve Maraboli

60 Things to Be Grateful For

/ James Browning

Some days we all run a little short of gratitude and need to be reminded of the gifts in our lives.  Here’s a list to tuck away somewhere and pull out on “one of those days” that was posted by Celestine Chua on tinybuddha.com.

Here are 60 things to be grateful for in our lives:

1. Your parents – For giving birth to you. Because if there is no them, there will not be you.
2. Your family – For being your closest kin in the world
3. Your friends – For being your companions in life
4. Sense of sight – For letting you see the colors of life
5. Sense of hearing – For letting you hear trickle of rain, the voices of your loved ones, and the harmonious chords of music
6. Sense of touch – For letting you feel the texture of your clothes, the breeze of the wind, the hands of your loved ones
7. Sense of smell – For letting you smell scented candles, perfumes, and beautiful flowers in your garden
8. Sense of taste – For letting you savor the sweetness of fruits, the saltiness of seawater, the sourness of pickles, the bitterness of bitter gourd, and the spiciness of chilli
9. Your speech – For giving you the outlet to express yourself
10. Your heart – For pumping blood to all the parts of your body every second since you were born; for giving you the ability to feel
11. Your lungs – For letting you breathe so you can live
12. Your immune system – For fighting viruses that enter your body. For keeping you in the pink of your health so you can do the things you love.
13. Your hands – So you can type on your computer, flip the pages of books, and hold the hands of your loved ones
14. Your legs – For letting you walk, run, swim, play the sports you love, and curl up in the comfort of your seat
15. Your mind – For the ability to think, to store memories, and to create new solutions
16. Your good health – For enabling you to do what you want to do and for what you’re about to do in the future
17. Your school – For providing an environment conducive to learning and growing
18. Your teachers – For their dedication and for passing down knowledge to you
19. Tears – For helping you express your deepest emotions
20. Disappointment – So you know the things that matter to you most
21. Fears – So you know your opportunities for growth
22. Pain – For you to become a stronger person
23. Sadness – For you to appreciate the spectrum of human emotions
24. Happiness – For you to soak in the beauty of life
25. The Sun – For bringing in light and beauty to this world
26. Sunset – For a beautiful sight to end the day
27. Moon and Stars – For brightening up our night sky
28. Sunrise – For a beautiful sight to start the morning
29. Rain – For cooling you when it gets too warm and for making it comfy to sleep in on weekends
30. Snow – For making winter even more beautiful
31. Rainbows – For a beautiful sight to look forward to after rain
32. Oxygen – For making life possible
33. The Earth – For creating the environment for life to begin
34. Mother nature – For covering our world in beauty
35. Animals – For adding to the diversity of life
36. Internet – For connecting you and me despite the physical space between us
37. Transport – For making it easier to commute from one place to another
38. Mobile phones – For making it easy to stay in touch with others
39. Computers – For making our lives more effective and efficient
40. Technology – For making impossible things possible
41. Movies – For providing a source of entertainment
42. Books – For adding wisdom into your life
43. Blogs – For connecting you with other like-minded people
44. Shoes – For protecting your feet when you are out
45. Time – For a system to organize yourself and keep track of activities
46. Your job – For giving you a source of living and for being a medium where you can add value to the world
47. Music – For lifting your spirits when you’re down and for filling your life with more love
48. Your bed – For you to sleep comfortably in every night
49. Your home – For a place you can call home
50. Your soul mate – For being the one who understands everything you’re going through
51. Your best friends – For being there for you whenever you need them
52. Your enemies – For helping you uncover your blind spots so you can become a better person
53. Kind strangers – For brightening up your days when you least expect it
54. Your mistakes – For helping you to improve and become better
55. Heartbreaks – For helping you mature and become a better person
56. Laughter – For serenading your life with joy
57. Love – For letting you feel what it means to truly be alive
58. Life’s challenges – For helping you grow and become who you are
59. Life – For giving you the chance to experience all that you’re experiencing, and will be experiencing in time to come
And last but not least… #60:
You.

For being who you are and touching the world with your presence. For being alive and reading this post. For giving me the chance to touch your life and fulfill my purpose to help others. You are the reason I live. Thank you.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/60-things-to-be-grateful-for-in-life/

We often take for granted
the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick

500th Good Morning Gratitude Posting

/ James Browning

Desiderada Too
Found in a South Australian kitchen.

Don’t go placidly amid the apathy and lethargy. Remember that your silence is consent and there can be no peace where there is injustice.

You can’t please all the people all the time, so shout your truth from the mountain top and don’t accept nonsense from the bigoted, the ignorant and the self-serving.

Don’t avoid people who are upset. They may have good reasons and your care and interest may make them less aggressive.

Be tolerant of the diversity that makes everyone special and be aware that there are no persons greater or lesser than yourself.

Don’t live in the past or future. Enjoy the present.

Don’t become obsessed by your own career. It cannot give you security or possession of anything or anyone.

Exercise trust in your dealings but be circumspect, as the world is full of materialists.

Become yourself. Express affection for all people and all species.

Be skeptical about romance for it is as transient as a summer flower.

Don’t become tired in your ways and never surrender your sense of wonder. Don’t be defensive. Be optimistic and imaginative.

Fatigue and loneliness are born of fear. Be rigorous in accepting responsibility for your actions and their consequences.

You are a child of your less than perfect parents and like the trees and the stars your time will pass. And whether or not it is clear to you, things are not working out nearly as well as they could.

Whatever you conceive God to be, also be aware that every single thing you do actually changes the world. Dreams cannot be broken and they will give you no peace if you don’t act with integrity.

Unfortunately, this world is becoming uglier each day.

Be brave.

Strive for the right of all people to make their own paths.

Copyright 1992 Andrew Bunney.

True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside;
it must be born within…  and then carried outward
Jean Vanier 

Thank You Doug

/ James Browning

For today’s blog to make any sense, one should first read yesterday’s installment https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2012/08/30/thank-you-sherry/

Doug, a dear friend of mine, liked yesterday’s post. When I arrived home after work the short email from him below was in my inbox:

Well, I hope you’ve heard from Sherry by now! I just had to find her. What a sweet lady. She recited a two-line poem she wrote that I thought was really insightful: Ode to an Oyster. Oh little oyster, teach me the secret of your world. For who else can take an irritation, and change it to a pearl. Groovy. Have a great rest-of-the-day! Doug

Further down in my inbox was another email:

James, I was contacted early this morning by your friend Doug, he told me about your blog and that you had posted my poem ‘Ghosts’. James I was so touched by your words and couldn’t keep my eyes dry. You did me great honor. Hope to hear from you soon, Sherry

I immediately began a reply:

Dear Sherry,

… This morning when I was writing tears never overtook me, but this evening reading your note they came, but were joyful tears. I so feared your cancer had taken you and am so happy to find my fear was unfounded.

In recent years often my life has been divinely guided. I was led to begin writing goodmorninggratitude. I woke up on a Saturday in April of 2011 and knew I was supposed to begin it. Yet I had never written a blog and spent most of the weekend figuring it out. Then Monday morning, April 25, 2012 I wrote “Hello World” and have written something daily on goodmorninggratitude.com without fail for 492 days now.

Through illness, business travel, vacations and visits to far away friends and family I have remained faithful to what I feel I was called to do. I have never been as faithful to anything in my entire life. To date goodmorninggratitude has been read in 72 countries and is seen daily by hundreds of readers. I am mystified except to say it’s God’s work. I have no other explanation. When I listen to the soft and gentle direction He gives…. my life always comes to something better than I ever could find by myself.

Sometimes my daily written gratitude is for what I learned from some of the most painful and difficult experiences of my life.  Others days it’s about the pure beauty and good I see. It takes me an hour or so daily to focus, write and complete each post. I could not have predicted how focusing on gratitude would so profoundly change my life. From what I write I get back what I give multiplied many times over. Hearing from you is proof once again of that.

I am so glad you are still filled with life and grateful to know there is more to read that originates from the same tender heart and sharp mind I felt in “Ghosts”. I am emotionally stunned, but happy and glad to hear from you. Thank you for reaching out to me and thank God (and Doug) for causing it to happen. James

Once I read Sherry’s email I wrote Doug:

What a beautiful end to a long work day. Thank you for continuing to contribute good to my life. I am near speechless and don’t know what to say except… God bless you. He blessed me with knowing you.

We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow-men;
and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville

Wind in the Trees

/ James Browning

I find what I go looking for. What I expect seems to manifest itself before me with great frequency. My thoughts shape my life more than any other single factor. Today I feel great and am loving life. With that spirit I choose to begin my day with a thought by Henry Drummond:

…to love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever…

With intention I hope to be more aware today than usual and live closely to the ending passage from the book “Contemplate” by Gwen Frostic, punctuated just as she originally wrote and published it:

Savor each moment of beauty –
The majestic – – and the simple . . .

Listen to silence – – –
that in itself
renders all words meaningless . . . . .

Feel the wind in the trees – – –
The ebb and flow of the tides – – –
Wild wings soaring high – – –
– – – the timeless rhythm of life . . . . .

Dream of stars shining over head – – –
– – of the mystic kinship
that underlies all life . . . . .

Keep a sense of wonder –
and of awe – – – –
– – – – forever

Some mornings I am nearly overtaken with gratefulness to be alive. I relish those days when I begin well and know whatever comes, it will be an outstanding day. What  joy to be conscious and able to witness and experience all I will get to smell, feel, hear, taste and see! Come pain or pleasure, trouble or ease, happiness or grief… it will be a good day. I am grateful to be alive!

You will find as you look back upon your life
that the moments when you have truly lived
are the moments when you have done things
in the spirit of love.
Henry Drummond