Thinking About It

In our lives, it is inevitable that we face hardships, challenges, and difficulties. It could be through our dislikes, our fears, or our negative encounters. But all these struggles have shaped us into the people we are today. They push us out of our comfort zones, make us do things we would not normally do, and we come out as stronger individuals. These invaluable experiences are that for which we will be grateful today.

A common reality is that many of us do not like our body or manage to find imperfections that we consequently use to judge ourselves. But what we can realise is that the very thing we are dissatisfied with plays a significant role in serving us! And for that, we should be grateful. Today, we will embrace our entire body, both the parts we do like and do not like as much, and be thankful for all that it gives us.

As we have seen earlier, we can be grateful for our incredible sense of sight. But this is not the only sense for which we should be thankful for as all of our senses play an integral part in our lives. Without any one of them, we would feel a sense of incompleteness. Today, let us focus on showing gratitude to another one of our senses. Choose a sensation you wish to be completely aware of, and meditate on it with this session.

Gratitude knows no limits, be it duration, location or anything else! We often go through life perceiving our small moments as fleeting and separate from one another. But in reality, we are not a collection of separate moments; we are bound by time, to be connected. Time has the most valuable role as it allows us to create memories, to learn from experiences, and to try again. Its importance is more than worthy of our gratitude and deservingly calls for our thankfulness.

Like how a flower needs rain and how the ocean needs a shore to break, people need people. We all need each other, not only for us to be able to connect, relate and share, but also for our desire to be recognised and appreciated. Relationships are a key part of this! We have many relationships in our lives, some of which we may easily and unknowingly take for granted. As such, today we will be attentive and try to notice something different about them so we can sincerely be grateful for them. 

Gratitude is the result of appreciation and free will. Our gratefulness comes first from our appreciation upon recognising that something is valuable to us. It then stems from the fact that all of this is freely given to us. We can choose to be grateful or we can choose to take our blessings for granted. When we want to start doing things differently, such as opting for the former option, we need our mind to be alert so that we can make these choices. Today we will focus on our choice to be grateful.

Like we are grateful for the glass being half-full, we can be grateful for the glass itself. The more we feel thankful, the more we can start to express it in our lives. As we practice it more, this gratitude that we feel inside will shine brightly outside. But sometimes, we don’t realise that we appreciate something until we lose it. Today, we strengthen our minds by giving up something for the day and consequently, being grateful for it when we use it next.

In prayers, gratitude is shown in the various rituals through different ways. Since the Lord gives us everything, we try to offer the best we have to Him. We praise the Lord, sing meaningful phrases in the Aarti, or provide offerings as an expression of our gratitude. Often when we pray, we ask for something. Today, let us pray to really feel our gratitude for gratitude is, in fact, our best prayer. Follow this session to write your gratitude prayer so you may pray genuinely in gratitude. 

Expand your gratitude with today’s session, for gratitude has no limit. There is nothing to stop us from being grateful and it is indeed easy to practice! What is needed is simply the opening up of your mind to find things to be thankful for. Beyond being grateful for the good that happens to us, today we realise how we can also be grateful for things and people that have enriched the lives of our loved ones.

In making us appreciate the value of things and people, gratitude not only empowers us to see the glass as half-full, but also prevents the half-full from leaking away. As we stop to notice that we are constantly getting more, the glass gets more and more full – a concept often overlooked since we tend to forget our previous gains. Today, we note that things are not lost, but simply, forgotten. As such, we must remember them with gratitude.

Our sense of gratitude grows when we understand just how much we have been given. It empowers us to be humble because we realise we are getting more than we give, more than we work for, and even more than we deserve! We have been taken care of since we were in our mothers’ womb, where everything had been provided for us without even asking for it. In noticing just how many things have come to us without our request or need for it, we should bask in gratitude for how we have so graciously been taken care of.

We first think gratitude means appreciating all the good. But what about the bad? Like all the positive things we can be thankful for, we can even be grateful for the things that have gone wrong in our life! Let’s see these unpleasant, past experiences as powerful lessons that have, in turn, shaped us into the people we are today. When we are ready to be grateful for everything, the good and the bad, we turn what was once our sufferings into blessings.

Awareness is the first step to gratitude. The more we expose yourself to gratitude, the easier it gets. Gratitude is a secret weapon that improves our lives drastically. The more we wield it, the stronger we become. It reduces stress while boosting our mood and self-esteem. By making us more giving and cooperative, gratitude naturally allows us to have healthier relationships and progress in our work.  

Did you know that, on average, we blink around 15 to 20 times each minute, amounting to 10% of our day being spent on merely blinking? The act of blinking sounds so simple but its complex purpose serves many functions of protection. Similarly, our whole body is constantly working to serve and protect us, even when we are not aware of it. Today, we centre our concentration on showing gratitude for our body, the important roles it plays and the significantly determinative influence it has over our health.

When we think of our desire for happiness, we tend to create thought patterns where we consequently postpone our happiness by saying, “I will be happy when…” But instead of delaying our happiness, we can be happy now by turning our attention away from what we do not have yet and focusing on all the things we currently already have. With gratitude, delve into your meditation by asking yourself “What am I grateful for?”, and let your thoughts drive you deeper within in your search for happiness.

Our ancestors, be it our immediate lineage or even the history of the city we are a part of, are pillars upon whom and what we make offerings to. They have worked to create the world we have been born into, and we merely benefit from it. Today, we focus our gratitude in remembrance of them and what they created, ensuring we do not destroy it, but rather, build on it.

When we ‘like’ others’ posts on social media to broaden networking, be effective in commercial professions and increase standards of living, albeit for different intentions, we do a similar thing within spirituality. The purpose of doing so in the spiritual world is to better people, create meaningful relationships and add value to our standard of life. Today, we focus on giving positive feedback and making people feel valued so that we can express our gratitude for others. 

The saying “actions speak louder than words” could not hold more truth, especially in the case of gratitude. Gratitude can only be complete once it has been thought of, felt and expressed. Ponder upon times you have been treated with gratitude – it is usually a pleasant feeling. Now, reciprocate that feeling and express your gratitude by engaging with today’s task of volunteering. Once we realise how much we have received, we also see just how blessed we are and how expressive we can be with our gratitude.

Our eyes provide us with the blessing of sight and vision. Beyond observing the sunsets, landscapes, and physical features of our natural world, we can also be grateful for the more subtle yet extremely meaningful and potent sights, expressions, and quite significantly, colours. Notice the influence of colour, their ability to blend in or contrast with each other, their addition to beauty, dimension and structure. Express gratitude to one of our most valuable senses: sight.

We don’t normally meet most of the people that contribute to the finished products we consume. We only really meet the last person in the chain. Today, we focus on the people we do meet and acknowledge how we interact with them. How do we progress from automated, transactional interactions to actually showing our gratitude? The answer lies in making eye contact, being physically present, and while saying “thank you” is a start, more statements can be made to elevate our interactions.