Today I did not start the morning with a grateful heart. It wasn't ungrateful. I just forgot about being grateful and instead the day just started. I was busy, hurried, and eventually frustrated and annoyed. We weren't really running late until my kids didn't want to get dressed (the nerve of those toddlers). I rushed them in the car and may have yelled, "Everyone stop talking!" Of course I got questioned as to why I was yelling and it helped remind me that if I had a bad start to the day that would mean that my kids probably would too. I faked a decent morning long enough for me to drop them off at school.
Once I got to the car rental place my feelings of pretending it was a decent morning had drifted and I was back in frustration mode. Then the rental company was a little slow and there was no place to park. My EZ-pass wasn't working so I had to go through the regular lanes. I was going to be 15 minutes late to my appointment. Gratitude was not on the top of my mind.
What happened next adjusted my thinking. It was not some big epiphany. Instead I did what I always did on my long drives. I put on some personal development. Nothing amazing like "how to be thankful when your morning isn't great". No I just listened to some personal development. Got in my groove. Then I focused on my gratitude challenge. Three things each day for which I am thankful. At this point it was not easy but I started coming up with ones. Like the fact that because of the EZ-Pass issues I was actually talking to the folks at the toll plazas. Really nice folks actually.
The practice of gratitude was changing my day. Not that I learned to wake up with a gracious or thankful heart but that I put in place the tools to find things to be thankful for in my day. That is when the magic happened. That is when I finally found an opening for massage, that I really didn't want to spend money on, but desperately needed to get rid of my headache. That is when my email was mercifully quiet today. That is when my husband picked up the kids before picking me up at the rental car company so that our night could start early. And the true miracle was of course that my kids went to bed without much fuss. All these small blessings in my day because I had change my attitude. I had opened the door to abundance.
