On Gratitude

I've been chanting the "be grateful" mantra for several years now. Of course, the second the going gets tough, the mantra gets going too! I'm hoping these two moving accounts (my recent discoveries from The Secret) will do a better job of holding me to it. I've been practicing already, and while I cannot say "it has brought about wondrous changes in my life already!" I can say that it feels good. And feeling good feels good indeed :).

Gratitude has been such a powerful exercise for me. Every morning I get up and say "Thank you." Every morning, when my feet hit the floor, "Thank you." And then I start running through what I'm grateful for, as I'm brushing my teeth and doing the things I do in the morning. And I'm not just thinking about them and doing some rote routine. I'm putting it out there and I'm feeling the feelings of gratitude.

- James Ray

I think everybody goes through times when they say, "Things aren't working right," or, "Things are going bad." Once, when there were some things going on in my family, I found a rock, and I just sat holding it. I took this rock, I stuck it in my pocket, and I said "Every time I touch this rock I'm going to think of something that I'm grateful for." So every morning when I get up, I pick it up off the dresser, I put it in my pocket, and I go through the things I'm grateful for. At night, what do I do? I empty my pocket, and there it is again.

I've had some amazing experiences with this idea. A guy from South Africa saw me drop it. He asked, "What is that?" I explained it to him, and he started calling it a gratitude rock. Two weeks later I got an email from him, in South Africa. And he said, "My son is dying from a rare disease. It's a type of hepatitis. Would you send me three gratitude rocks?" They were just ordinary rocks I found off the street, so I said "Sure." I had to make sure that the rocks were very special, so i went out to the stream, picked out the right rocks, and sent them off to him.

Four or five months later I get an email from him. He said, "My son's better, he's doing terrific." And he said, "But you need to know something. We've sold over a thousand rocks at ten dollars apiece as gratitude rocks, and we've raised all this money for charity. Thank you very much."

So it's very important to have an "attitude of gratitude."

- Lee Brower