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One of the biggest obstacles to maintaining a consistent attitude of gratitude toward life is the tendency to worry. Worry is a symptom of fear, but then if you’re a worrier you already know that, don’t you?. Worry is obsessive and addicting. Once your brain latches on to a worrisome thought, it tends to get stuck there and attract more worried thoughts just like it. The bad part is that once your brain gets stuck in that worrying mode, you’re sending out some powerful negative energy that is attracting into your life the very thing that you’re worried about. Worry sets you up for the worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I remember when I was much younger, watching Gone With the Wind and looking down on Scarlett O’Hara with disdain when she exclaimed, “Fiddle-dee-dee! I won’t worry about that today. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day!” I felt superior because I would never be that irresponsible. Responsible people would be worrying about that stuff TODAY, not tomorrow. We must face up to our hardships! We can’t just be in denial!
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” Melody Beattie
Fear makes us do some drastic things that appear on the surface to be reasonable. For the past two years, for instance, I’ve been heavy into personal development, trying to be the best me that I can be. My iPod is filled with inspirational and motivational speakers like Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, and Joel Osteen, and with positive-thinking textbooks like Wallace Wattle’s The Science of Being Rich, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Jerry and Esther Hick’s Abraham series, and The Secret. I play that stuff constantly, sometimes letting them play all through the night when I should really be sleeping. My iPod is so filled with inspirational tracks that I don’t even have room to keep music on it any more. That really should have been my first clue that something was out of balance here. I mean, I’m a musician. Shouldn’t I be listening to music?
Welcome to my Living Gratitude blog. I’ve started this blog because I need to remind myself every day to be grateful for everything that I have. You see, I have a confession to make: I’m a chronic worrier. For decades it’s been my job to predict cash flow scenarios for my clients so that they could make informed financial decisions. I always felt I needed to include the worst-case scenario in those projections because what if the worst really happens? People need to have a plan, don’t they? When economic times were flush, my tendency toward pessimism was just a quirky annoyance. But now that the economy really has tanked and “the worst that could happen” seems to really be happening … well, my level of worrying has gone way past fear into an almost constant terrified panic. It’s not pretty, trust me. So I invite you to join me on my quest to leave my fearful thoughts behind me, and to adopt in their place a constant and abiding attitude of gratitude.
