What Lights You Up?

14Practice Gratitude

“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

—Melody Beattie

GRATITUDE IS A choice. We have the power to choose how we feel and how we react to everything around us on a daily basis. A dear friend said to me recently, “You cannot have faith only when things are going your way. You must also have faith even when they are not. Optimism and gratitude are inextricably linked and are generated from inside of you, not from outside.” Wise words, Chris, and I’m so grateful for our lifelong friendship, ever since our days working at Software Architects together.

Gratitude is also “the practice of making space for appreciation,” according to psychologist Dr. Snehal Kumar. This could be an appreciation for the people and things in your life, the experiences you’ve had, or the experiences you’ve yet to have, but gratitude can also (and should) be rooted in an appreciation of the self, Kumar explains.

With every situation, even the most stressful, I try to believe there can be a silver lining or some sort of lesson to be learned that will lead us to where we need to go to be the best that we can be. It may not be immediately clear when we are going through it, but eventually, hopefully, it will all make sense. I don’t want to sound cliché, but there is something to learn in every situation that comes our way. It’s not always easy to see it when we’re in the middle of it, but after reflection, there can be moments ...