Gazing in the Mirror

March 23 - The Surprising Effects of Practicing Gratitude

To educate yourself for
the feeling of gratitude means
to take nothing for granted,...
everything originates in a will
for the good, ... train yourself
never to put off ... the
expression of gratitude.
~ Albert Schweitzer

We believe there are great
spiritual forces that we can
draw on and deposit in our own
minds, and which can be used
in any emergency, in any stress
or strain of life.
~ Ernest Holmes

I had an interesting realization one day. There developed a problem with our satellite system and I don't enjoy the work I am our Satellite Tech Support person here. So I called the tech support team for our system provider. I was astounded to get a young gentleman with a hispanic accent in Brownsville, TX (reminding me of the region where I grew up in childhood) instead of someone whose accent tells me that they reside in some further off place. Those other kinds seem to excel in delivering promises that they will make me "very happy" (and then usually don't succeed but admittedly, they sometimes do). I spent an hour with him and he also did not make me "very happy". He claimed there was no problem on the provider's side of the service. He spent an hour taking me through various tests and finally proving only to his own self that there WAS a problem with my connection to hughesnet.com even though I could connect to Google or even The New York Times online.

At least he compensated me with 3 restore tokens worth $15 (though I consider myself worth at least $50/hr). It was my needing to extend our satellite's access "allowance" by purchasing extra bandwidth which caused me to become involved with the situation to begin with. He reassured me that my service would be un-"throttled" soon. But after a long time it was still not un-"throttled" and I still could not get the provider's website to load so that I could apply the "free" $5 token to un-"throttle" it myself. So I had to call the tech support team again. I was growing frustrated because it was getting late in the day and darkness was increasing. Most important to my own self-centered interest was that I had not had my daily hike in the forest which I do maintain a belief that I actually need that for my happiness and sanity.

The next tech got my service un-throttled but it remained de-graded (functioning less than optimally). He admitted that maintenance was occurring and indicated that was why I could not get the provider's website to come up in my browser. Then he insisted on sending me to yet another tech who simply confirmed that there were "issues" on their side related to "maintenance" and who said it would be another hour or two before my service quality was normal again.

Well as I headed out for my hike all I could feel was gratitude and that actually surprised me. I wasn't aggravated but grateful – that we even have a satellite because my access to friends online is very important to me and critical to my being content while living a rather isolated life in a kind of wilderness environment. I was grateful that tech support was always "only a phone call away" even if it did eat up my personal time as quickly as YouTubes eat up our satellite allowance (a problem we've had because our sons spend a lot of time watching them). I was grateful for the 3 "free" tokens because our bill this month is going to be high enough and we buy these "restore" tokens at $75 each to receive 25 Gs of extended access. I am always grateful when each month's period is over.  We never live within our monthly download allowance and that costs us a hefty amount. That day, I could only see it ALL as actually "good". This was not pretending. It was what I was actually feeling – only gratitude.

I could feel gratitude about the whole situation, even though I could have just as easily been feeling aggravation and resentment. The honest reality was – I was not feeling those "negative" thoughts/emotions. I view this as a kind of "arriving" at a better state of existence.  I stay mostly there pretty much all the time.  That long ago day, I still had to call tech support one more time that night because hours later the system was still degraded. I had discovered a system control screen in my trial and error searching that showed our web acceleration was disabled BY ME ? Yes, the tech had had me do that, I remembered it then (but I couldn't remember where to go to fix that). He had neglected to take me back through that crucial step to reset it – back to "enabled". And even though I had mentioned that "degraded status" to 2 other techs before my hike, not one of them clicked on the reason that my system was degraded, that some setting wasn't correct in our system. I had to discover this answer for myself and then it could be addressed by those who have more skilled in understanding it all than I do. At least that support happened quite quickly and then finally all was well after that.

For years now I have been practicing gratitude consistently throughout my day. Sometimes more often, other times less often. I will take a payment for a bill out to the mailbox and be grateful that we have the funds to pay it. I feel celebratory whenever a check arrives in the mail to pay us – regardless of whether we have financial abundance or feel some lack regarding that at any given moment. The perspective within my own self is that money is a flow like water through a consistent stream channel. I am a cog in the wheel of the abundance cycle. The money comes in, I process it and then I send it out to some other party. Whatever isn't sent out is available for our family's personal financial support and it is always "enough", even though sometimes our desires exceed our ability to fulfill them with current monies.

~ perspective

There is always something in
our lives for which we can be
grateful – even if it is only for
a chair to sit in.
Being able to appreciate the
blessings in our lives uplifts our
mood into a sense of well-being.
I believe that my sense of gratitude
and appreciation is actually a
vibrational expression within me
and that the interconnectedness
of life causes this vibration to be
an attracting force.
There is also an acceptance in
the ability to appreciate what IS
that reduces anxiety and stress
bringing a deep sense of peace
with reality.
I understand that depressive
perspectives in those closest to
me can have a real impact on my
own life's quality of expression –
therefore I take these seriously
while seeking to align with my own
truth in order to modify what
actually expresses.

#abundance #emotion #enough #finances #flow #friends #frustration #money #self-reliance #wellness