Having Gratitude Even When It's Hard

Happy Thanksgiving to you. May your days be blessed and warmed with kindnesses and connections. May you know first hand the experience of appreciation, gratitude, kindness, compassion, inclusion, support – even in small ways through your own sharing with someone else or them sharing with you. And may you feel how these positive human emotions can be reparative to the emotions of hurt, anger, exclusion, rejection.

I am so grateful to people I have talked with this week who have shared their courage and emotions with me. I am touched by those who have committed to being kind to everyone; or who have connected to their generosity through their creativity; or who are trying to understand what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes; or who have found things that they can do to take a stand. I am grateful to many who have collectively grieved, or had courageous conversations, or become more attuned to or aware of how they live their lives, acknowledging their own sense of guilt or listening to someone it was difficult to listen to, and even trying the difficult thing of having compassion for someone else who they feel hurt by.

I have gratitude for the many examples of human kind I have been blessed to experience.

In my appreciation to you for reading my writings, I am sharing with you a list of gratitude quotes I have come across over the last year or so. I like the practice of reading them and taking a breath in after each one, and then letting myself savor the warm feeling of being touched by the sentiment as I breathe out after each one. May your heart be warmed as you read these too.

You might print this list up and cut between each quote; then distribute them in your home or work space so you can be surprised each time you encounter one, and mindfully take it in anew. Or maybe spread them on your Thanksgiving dinner table, and have those you gather with read them or add their own expressions of gratitude.

Take good care and may your heart be filled with gratefulness.

Gratitude Quotes:

• No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude. — Alfred North Whitehead
• Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude. — A.A. Milne
• This a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.— Maya Angelou
• Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.— Marcel Proust
• We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.— Cynthia Ozick
• (Some people) have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy. — A.H. Maslow
• If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.— Meister Eckhart
• Find the good and praise it. — Alex Haley
• Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot. — The Hausa of Nigeria
• Blessed are those that can give without remembering and receive without forgetting. — Author Unknown
• If you concentrate on finding whatever 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
• Gratitude is the best attitude.
• God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” — William A. Ward
• With arms outstretched I thank./ With heart beating gratefully I love./ With body in health I jump for joy./ With spirit full I live. — Terri Guillemets
• Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel. —Author Unknown
• Always keep an open mind and a compassionate heart. — Phil Jackson
• Be grateful for the good moments, and graceful during the difficult ones
• The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart. — Helen Keller
• If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.— Dalai Lama
• Gather here with grateful hearts.
• May the sun bring you new energy by day; May the moon softly restore you by night; May the rain wash away your worries; May the breeze blow new strength into your being. May you walk through the world and know it’s beauty all the days of your life. – Apache Blessing

• If you haven’t all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you wouldn’t want.
• I’m thankful for my struggle, because without it I wouldn’t have come across my strength. — Alexandra Elle
• Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. — Henry James
• Gratitude is noticing the extraordinary in the ordinary. And then taking the nanosecond to feel it. — Karen Krakower Kaplan
• Wherever you go, go with all your heart. — Confucius
• It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the Earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. — Rachel Carson
• You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you .— Sarah Ban Breathnak
• Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. — Melody Beattie
• Want what you have and don’t want what you don’t have. Here you will find true fulfillment.
• The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
• The time is always right to do what is right. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
• This too shall pass. – King Solomon
• Kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society. — Cesar Chavez
• This perspective is called finding the goodness in everything. As proof of the human capacity to do so, here is a prayer written by an unknown prisoner in the Ravensbruck concentration camp and left beside the body of a dead child:

“Oh Lord, remember not only the men and women of goodwill, but also those of ill will. But do not remember only the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember too the fruits we brought forth thanks to this suffering-our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all of this. And when they come judgment, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”

Many blessings and giving of thanks to you.

Listening with Heart

Cindi Rivera, MFT
Marriage, Family Therapist
www.cindiriveratherapy.com
[email protected]
(510) 482-4445

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