expression of our full humanness.
11
In humble moments when we can no longer gloss over the roughness of life, grat-
itude has a way of pushing out the real soreness of feeling cheated or inadequate
to the rugged realities of the world. Gratitude seemed to be a handy response to
dodge the tough things for which there are no simple or comforting answers.
— Patrick J. Malone
Take a few minutes to reflect back on a happy moment in your life that stands out
for you, a moment that stays with you, even if it happened ten, twenty, forty years
ago. Experience it again—see the scene, hear the sounds that were around you,
feel the sensations.What was it about that moment that stays with you? What was
going on for you that allowed you to feel grateful?
That’s the most wonderful thing about gratitude—it makes you feel full,
bursting with delight, just to remember the gifts you have received. Thus are we
doubly blessed—when we receive something, for the gift itself, and later, in
recall, for the miracle of having been given it.
12
Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted—a paved road or a
washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation,
you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling
that nurtures the soul.
—Rabbi Harold Kushner
One of the incredible truths about gratitude is that it is impossible to feel both
the positive emotion of thankfulness and a negative emotion such as anger or fear
at the same time. Gratitude births only positive feelings—love, compassion, joy,
and hope. As we focus on what we are thankful for, fear, anger, bitterness simply
melt away, seemingly without effort.
How can this be? The answer is that gratitude helps us track success and the
brain naturally works to track success. If you have ever watched a baby learn
something, you’ll know what I mean. Learning to walk, for example, she stands
and puts out one foot. Boom! Down she goes because her balance wasn’t right.
Instead of castigating herself for blowing it, getting angry, or blaming the floor or
her shoe, she just registers that it didn’t work and tries again.
As we get older, however, we get schooled in our mistakes, and learn to focus
on what’s lacking, missing, inadequate, and painful. That’s why gratitude is so
powerful. It helps us to return to our natural state of joyfulness where we notice
what’s right instead of what’s wrong. Gratitude reminds us to be like plants,
which turn toward, not away, from the light.
14
Joy is prayer—Joy is strength—Joy is love—Joy is a net of love by which you can
catch souls. She gives most who gives with joy.
—Mother Teresa
I don’t know about you, but in general, there hasn’t been a lot of joy, that open-
ing and swelling of the heart, in my life. It wasn’t because of my circumstances,
because they weren’t particularly hard, but because of my mental training. Like so
many of us, I was busy climbing the ladder of success, and took no time to enjoy
the journey. I was too busy getting on to the next challenge. But I got sick and
tired of a joyless existence, and so have thought a lot in the past few years about
how to bring more joy into my life. The more I think about it, the more I believe
that joy and gratitude are inseparable. Joy is defined by the dictionary as an
“emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of
possessing what one desires,” while gratitude is that “state of being appreciative
of benefits received.” In other words, whenever we are appreciative, we are filled
with a sense of well-being and swept up by the feeling of joy.
15
Begin today. Declare out loud to the Universe that you are willing to let go of
struggle and eager to learn through joy.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach
Want to feel more joyful? Take a moment right now to think of all that you have
accomplished today and celebrate each feat, no matter its size.You feel better,
even if only a little bit, right? The more we pay attention to our successes and
accomplishments, the more success we can create. And we’ll view life as a grand
adventure that we’re willing to show up for rather than a series of tedious tasks
to be crossed off or endured.
17
The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Young children are such exuberant, joy-filled creatures, eager to embrace life
in all its mystery and majesty. Everything is new, exciting, a gift—a bubble, a
snowflake, a mud puddle. But something in the process of growing up so often
takes the juice out of us.We become encrusted, hard, jaded. We lose our joy, our
exuberance, our passionate embrace of life.We trudge instead of skip, retreat
instead of explore, “too old for that,” whatever “that” is.
This drying up is so common that when we meet a vibrant, joy-filled older
