Daily Gratitude: This follows the “change of self” post quite nicely. Even when things seem stagnant in your life, recognize that you’re changing as the world around you is changing. You never stay in one place even when it seems like that’s all you do. You are constantly progressing. Your poor brain would rebel if it didn’t have the opportunity to redo its thoughts and ideas. Your life may seem stagnant but you aren’t. and it behooves you to look inside and see if you still think the same way about something in your life as you did. What about your relationship with your spouse? how has that changed? how has your opinion of him/her affected that relationship? Same with your kids and friends. What if you found out that your best friend supports the opposite political party than you? Would you be appalled and want to end the friendship? Would you be curious and want to know more? would you even care? What will be different, if anything, about your interaction with that person just because you now have one additional bit of info about them? Just thinking about it shows progress. it is also representative of a change in you. how does that feel?

Daily Gratitude: You might be reading this and saying that this is dumb, that you can’t ignore your past and certainly must pay attention to the future. And you’d be right. But the keys here are the words “dwell on” and “dream of” when it comes to he past and the future. The memories and dreams come hand in hand for us humans, don’t they? Yes and no. When you dwell on the past, you sort of step into it and that will propel you back there and you can wallow in despair and the “what if” or “I should have done…” mode. Neither of these are productive. Sure you can learn from the past and you should learn from it but then you put those lessons in your armamentarium for later reference. It’s the lessons, not the event or your perception of failure or success that you focus on. You now know a way NOT to do something. Moving on to the future, you need to know where you want to go and that’s an entire process in itself. But once you know where you want to go, use the future for visualization not “i wish” this or that. When you know where you’re going and you know what has or hasn’t worked in the past, you can focus on what you need to do NOW in order to achieve that “dream”. That means you need to take action. Dwelling on the past and dreaming of the future are not action activities. It’s the actions that get you going and keep you going. Take a look at what in you are doing (what actions are you taking) right now. Are they aligned with the lessons you’ve learned about achieving your dream? You may have learned a lot of lessons but you also need to decide which ones are pertinent to achieving your dream. Discard the others if they hold no value at the present moment

Daily Gratitude: You won’t believe this to be true until you try it; until you experience it. The key word here is “concentrate”. It’s not always easy to find the good in every situation but it’s there. You just have to dig like an archaeologist, sometimes slowly and carefully. But if you’re persistent, you will find the good. Why bother? Because the effort feels good and the results of that effort feel even better. Make each exploration a project, not a task. Be excited about finding that good, knowing it’s there. It’s not a chore to look and work hard to find it. It can and will be fun. Maybe you won’t be successful the first couple of times but you know what? You will have planted the seed in your subconscious and it will continue to work on that “problem” (finding the good in a particular situation) while you go about doing other things. Also, it’s like anything else. The more you practice, the better you get and the easier it gets. Start today. Don’t put it off. Keep track of what you discover so as to “pay yourself” on the back, so to speak. Keep a record so that later when things might be really tough, you can look back and say “i know it’s there. I Have proved it before so I just have to keep digging!”