“An attitude of gratitude” that phrase has been thrown around a lot over the years and with our having just celebrated Thanksgiving the phrase is in the forefront of my mind.

So, what is an attitude of gratitude?  In short, it is a frame of mind, a way of thinking and looking at life and it can be summarized in one word … thankfulness.

As I’ve posted before, there is a direct correlation between our level of thankfulness and our quality of life.  Thankfulness increases our quality of life while negativity decreases it.  Think about it, when we are thankful, our overall mood is upbeat, fun, joyful, and well, thankful.  When we are ungrateful and negative we tend to be grumpy, bitter and angry.

There is no doubt in my mind which of these I’d rather be.  So, in an effort to cultivate a continual attitude of gratitude I take time to recount my blessings and bless others.  I have also been disciplining myself to speak out loud something positive about every challenging situation that comes my way.  A perfect example occurred this past holiday weekend.

Saturday afternoon my family and I returned home after having run errands.  I walked into the garage looking for a yard rake and heard what sounded like a waterfall.  As I looked around I discovered we had a pipe that had broken in the ceiling and pouring out of it was steaming hot water.

My husband began shutting off valves and I got on the phone with our home warranty company. Eventually we had to have the water to our home shut off in order to stop the flow of water into our garage.  In the few hours of chaos it took to get the situation under control I noticed several boxes of books, pictures, office paraphernalia and my husband’s Monopoly collection were showing signs of water damage.

After several calls to our home warranty company we realized that a plumber was not going to be able to make it to our home until the following day.  We had a choice to make, we could be angry and upset about the situation, or we could have an attitude of gratitude and enjoy the rest of our weekend.  We opted for the later.

What did we have to be grateful about regarding a broken water pipe?  Plenty… the pipe that broke was in the garage, not the house, many of the water damaged items in the garage were at least somewhat salvageable, we had just renewed our home warranty four days earlier, a friend gave my husband and me a great rate at a hotel for the night, my daughter stayed the night with another friend and had a great time, the pipe was fixed the next day, and the plumber gave us great information on preventative maintenance for the rest of our pipes. All in all it was a good experience – a good experience because we choose to look for the positive things for which we were thankful.

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday I was watching a morning talk show. The topic of discussion was this very thing, how can we be thankful and show gratitude for our challenges.  One of the experts in the discussion said this, “A great way to express gratitude is to find a need of yours that has been met and meet it in someone else’s life.”   Her examples included a cancer survivor sitting with a cancer patient who is undergoing treatment or a formerly homeless person serving meals at a rescue mission.

Acts of gratitude don’t have to be this dramatic.  They can be as simple as being thankful for the location of a broken water pipe.  It is not how we show gratitude that is as important as the fact that we recognize our blessings and are genuinely grateful for them.

Choose a Better Life by adopting an attitude of gratitude.