To be grateful… What does it mean to be grateful?  I believe that the word grateful is a powerful word.  Like the words in the movie Dune, each word they said had a unique energy to it.  I believe words have a power to them.  There are words that give us courage, which cause us sadness and bring out the best in us.  The word grateful is one of those words.

When I am down and out, sad and hurt, I can stop and think of the things I am grateful for and 90% of the time my mood as a whole changes.  I feel peaceful and calm.

The other day as I was thinking of all that I love about my life, my home, the children I have, I felt the power of grateful, fill all those places that were once full of anxiety, fear, and limited belief slip away. The power of words is that ability to shift our focus.  If we want to be happy and peaceful, we only have to look at all we have and love that.  If we’re going to be upset, frustrated and angry, we only have to look at that which we think we lack.

Try this out when you are mad, frustrated and are having fear and anxiety about this or that. Try writing all that you love about your home, your kids, your spouse.  By the time you have named about five things, you find that all that seriousness you had going on stops.  The world has made it easy for us to look at the lack of things, but what if we could reteach ourselves to look for the abundance in what we have now?

Time is a human-made word that has a lot of superficial power behind it.   We are warned not to dawdle or fall behind.  We are taught to be in a hurry, to get all things done in life rapidly.  WHY??  Why can we not saunter in and enjoy the journey of getting there? Why can we not go and do just one thing at a time? Why do we worry about time?

How precious do we feel when we can take a nap without time constraints?

Grateful is a powerful, life-changing word. It has a lot of energy for it.  When we sit and look at all we have around us, we find we have plenty, even more than we ever thought possible.  There is no past, there is no future.  There is only right here at this moment.  Our history is still a part of us, and the future is that which we see ourselves doing ahead of time.   Time has no difference, and time is only a play on words.

I am grateful for my illness, my children, my fur babies, my spouse, my siblings, my friends, my home, my cars, my yard, my chickens, my choices.   I am grateful for my dreams, my life, my hopes and my faith.  I love powerful words, and I am thankful for the life I have chosen.  There is nothing outside of us, and it is all right here.  We need to allow that which is us to be and stop listening to outside opinions.

Grateful is a game changer. It helps us see all that we have done for ourselves and how well we have done that.  Grateful helps us understand how loving we are to ourselves and one and other.

Jesse Elder puts it so well: The Ultimate Freedom is the freedom to Choose your Focus.

So do yourself a great big loving act today.  Sit in a favorite place, take out your pen and paper and write down all that you have in your life, then go back and write behind each listed item, the word (grateful).  Grateful is a very humbling word, it is a powerful loving word. It is a strengthening word.