Giving Thanks?

Next month, the month we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the United States, people will begin posting one thing every day that they are thankful for. This is an easy task. For the most part, you can just look around you and name one person or one item you see and be thankful for that. The hard part is being grateful for those same things all year long.

I never could understand why would wait for one month in the year to be thankful. I digress.

Last Saturday, during my meditation practices, I came across a little challenge and decided to accept it. The challenge is to list 100 things I have asked for and received. This is focusing on positives. They gave some examples, such as “I asked to be born, I was” and so on. I began my list and intended to write three of these each day. Sadly, come Sunday, I forgot about it.

During my in-depth meditation yesterday, I reclaimed this challenge.

When I do certain meditations throughout the week, I occasionally do one about gratitude. I sit in front of the candle and images flash before my eyes of people, things and opportunities I am grateful for. I really enjoy this meditation and seeing who my heart pictures each time I do it. More and more, I find things I am grateful on a personal level, meaning about me.

This 100 Positives Challenge, as I have now dubbed it, is far different from just listing things I am grateful for. It is far more personal. You don’t just make a list of things. You step back and actually take a look at your life. You see where you had a need or desire that was fulfilled. You write down what you asked for and then how it was fulfilled.

Let me elaborate a little by using one I wrote this morning. I was thinking back to my adolescence. In junior high school, after much abuse in the home and bullying in school and church, I was extremely shy and timid. I would cry if you just looked at me and gods help us if you actually spoke to me. One of my positives this morning was, “I asked for a way to communicate, I was taught how to write poetry”. Poetry became my voice. It is my heart in written form. Writing is how I best communicate.

So often in today’s society, we neglect ourselves. Even with the age of multimedia social groups, people are still lacking in self esteem. There are so many good things about you. All you have to do is look for them. Little things throughout your life that you have gained simply because you asked. No, you may not have, or may not remember, asked to be born, but you were. You asked to be alive when you fought your way out of the womb. In this way you did ask to be born.

I issue this challenge to you here and now. Start now, instead of listing things you are thankful for, list positive things about you. Go each day and write one or, as I am doing, three things a day that you have gained because you asked. Look in your heart. Ask the Universe to show them to you. Pray and ask your god for revelation on this. Which ever means you choose, I challenge you to write 100 Positives. When you have gratitude in your heart for you and all you have accomplished, you can then have genuine gratitude for other people and things which will show every day of the year and not just the month of November.