A Grateful Heart: Cultivating A Mindset Of Gratitude Through Life’s Ups And Downs

Ah! Such a special time of the year! The holidays are upon us! It is a wonderful time to reset, reflect and enjoy the basics: family, food and football or family, food and holiday movies if you are me. We feel energized, pre-occupied, longing to make to best of the season. Time to evaluate our goals for the year and think of potential new ones for the upcoming one. We reflect on our experiences from the departing year, some met our expectations and others not so much. We draw our lessons and we, hopefully, move on with the knowing that things are unfolding as they should.

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” -Rumi

Indeed! A beautiful time of year! Not just for the food, gifts sharing and holiday movies which, don’t get me wrong, play an important part, but for the feeling of gratitude all around us! It is breathtaking to witness the trees, tirelessly, put on another one of their magical shows through an array of spectacular mingle of colors, welcoming their old friend winter. An overwhelming beauty indeed, and I can’t help but to feel grateful for the gift of bearing witness yet another year.

“Wear Gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”

-Rumi

Yes, gratitude is all around us, manifesting itself through the mundane. Mundane and harmonious Life! Never one thing. Neither good nor bad but rather an energy balance. Life! Capable of bringing us joy and laughter in one breath and tears and sorrow in another. Taking us from great elation to deep melancholy. Life,is indeed a great conspirator, always conspiring to give us the chance to be the star we are meant to be and claim our rightful place in this magnificent Universe.The more we are grateful to it, the more it is grateful to us, thereby forging an everlasting relationship routed in love, harmony and the knowing.

So, as we get together with family and friends to celebrate the holidays, let us embrace them with a grin of a co-conspirator and the knowing of a wise friend.

“Gratitude is the Wine of the Soul. Go on Get Drunk”

-Rumi

Have a wonderful holidays season and hold on to your crucial part in this perfect plot to spread love and harmony.

-Yaye Walker