Yesterday while I was speaking one of my audience participants challenged me or called me on the carpet so to speak.  “You cannot tell me you can come up with 10 things every day to be grateful for.”  I’ll tell you what I told her…  I do my very best!

True example:

September 16, 2008

I’m speaking in my home town and have a late flight (5 hours to sit and wait in the airport – ‘cuz the family is busy)…  I’m not in an attitude of gratitude mood… just got up on the wrong side of the bed that day.  Just before my session ends for the day, I get an emergency phone call from home.  My son was being rushed to ER… he had given up the hope that things would be okay and suicide had looked like his only way out. 

Okay Karen… find 10 gratitudes for that moment.  I’ll tell you it was hard, but as you read in his Mother’s Day tribute to me, it was what saved both of our lives.  I was strong internally because I had hope.  I had hope because I practiced having an attitude of gratitude. 

Gratitudes

1. He was alive and physically well

2. I had 5 whole hours with him in ER before my flight.

3. I got to be on the road working for the next two week to keep my mind occupied – visits were limited anyway and this way I could talk to him every day – several times a day by phone.

4. I had a best friend I could call and cry with

5. Grateful for my faith

6. Grateful for my husband and his support.

7. Grateful for my sister Julie and her insight and love.

8. Grateful we have one of the leading psych hospitals/wards in the country

9. Grateful we have THE Expert/Teaching doctor on one of the treatments they needed to give him.

10. Grateful to hold him in my arms and tell him I love him.

etc…

You see, what I’ve been told by my son is that he expected to see a Mom that was all freaked out and upset.  What he saw instead was one with love and pain for him in her eyes.  Without realizing what had happened, from listing my gratitudes while I rushed to ER to be with him, I had taken the focus off of “poor me” and placed it where it belonged – ON HIM – and only him!

Now do I really do my gratitudes every single day?  No!  I’d like to say I do, but some days like most of us I’m just not in the mood.  I’ve challenged myself to do 20 on these days and I can certainly see the difference between mood cycles when I practice an attitude of gratitude.

So to answer the challenge I was given yesterday.  I have good moods, bad moods and indifferent moods… but my life is a much more positive place to be when I can hold on to an attitude of gratitude.  It doesn’t take bad things away… but it does put you in a frame of mind to deal with them from a position of strength, hope and faith!