4 Things to Be Grateful For This Thanksgiving

Hey guys!

Since thanksgiving day begins in just a few hours, tomorrow morning blog posts will pop up everywhere titled “10 Things to Be Grateful For” or “Blessings You Should Count This Thanksgiving,” and many of them will mention things like modern technology or other conveniences, but often we overlook the greatest things in life; very frequently we look over them and don’t even acknowledge them as even being positive things.  Here’s some great things to be grateful for:

 

The Breath In Your Lungs

You are alive.  How awesome is that? Think about it, in the vastness of space that we’ve observed, Earth, this tiny little blue dot in the blackness is the only place we know of capable of harboring life.  Chances are, we are the most intelligent beings in the entire known universe.  We should stop and take a minute to truly appreciate who we are.

All People

A lot of the articles that I mentioned in the first paragraph will tell you to be thankful for your friends and family; I’m not saying this is a bad thing, in fact the people who extend kindness to you are one of the best things to be thankful for, and pretty much everyone takes a chance to stop and appreciate them, but we must also learn to appreciate our enemies equally.

This probably sounds crazy, but there’s a reason that they’re in our lives.  When I was in elementary school, I had a kid who would torment me constantly but because of the experience that I had with him, I learned how to deal with negative people.  Learn to thank God for them, look for the lesson that the Divine uses them to teach, and move on through life with a little more wisdom.

Your Job, Or Your Lack of One

A job that you love is one of life’s biggest blessings, especially if it provides enough money to give you financial stability, but even if you’re unemployed, desperately seeking a job, you should be thankful for the experience that you’re having.  Not having a job provides you with an opportunity to learn more about yourself.  During this time, you often think more deeply about your life’s purpose and what you want to do with your time on Earth, and this contemplation time is a precious gift in disguise.

Every Moment of Every Day

The Universe is almost fourteen billion years old.  You will most likely die before you turn one hundred.  One hundred years compared to many billions is like a camera flash compared to a whole week.  With the limited amount of moments you have in your life, the gift that is most essential to us is our time.  Every year, we carry away some positive memories; nothing like them can ever be recreated, so it is very important that we look at our year in the best light possible.

Live For Happiness, Not For Money

Hey guys!

So I'm assuming if you're reading this blog you were probably a reader of my original "Brandon Grant" blog and you already know who I am.

I had an assignment in English the other day where we were shown a video featuring a lecture from Alan Watts titled "What do You Desire?" and then asked to write a prompt on what we would do if money were no object.  Since in my belief, money IS no object, I wrote a pretty inspirational essay and thought I would share it with the world as my first blog post from the "Life of Light" blog.  Enjoy!

Every year, millions of Americans graduate college after years of studying something that they might not even be interested in, because they have been force-fed the idea that dollars are a unit to measure happiness. The idea that a successful career is the prerequisite for a happy life has been pounded into the heads of most American adults along with the idea that that's the only way to happiness. These adults live unfulfilling lives and force themselves to believe that mediocrity is the closest they can get to happiness. The truest kind of success is happiness, and a happy life is a life where you work at a job because you love that job and not because that job puts the best food on your dinner table. Imagine a world where money is no object. What would you do? What would I do?

I'll tell you what I'd do. The same thing that everyone else would do; follow their dream. I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing right now. I'm madly in love with both writing and music, and I've never been able to foresee a point in the future where I'm concerned about not making enough money. I spend hours every single day practicing playing the flute. Most of that time is spent while practicing with the school's marching band or concert band, although I still spend quite a lot of time playing it on my own and truly enjoy it. As for my true passion, writing fictional stories and self-help guides; I'm already well on my way. I have five books published on Amazon.com under my pen name, Brandon Grant. Several of them have become bestsellers in their categories, and I become more successful with every book I publish. I'm making money doing what I love.

Anyone else can follow my “dreams over dollars” lifestyle and if you do, I can almost guarantee that if you spend your life working for fulfillment instead of money, one day you can look back without regrets; thankful that you spent your life the way you did.

If you change your mind, you can change your life.