For this week’s Blog we are taking a break from our new series called “What Does Organic Mean, Anyway?” and taking some time to reflect on how grateful we are to be alive, to be loving, and to be experiencing this beautiful and bountiful planet we are so fortunate to call home.  Every year we try to fully and humbly embrace this holiday and to live out the intent of Abraham Lincoln who officially declared the last day of November as a day of Thanksgiving.  Lincoln proclaimed this holiday as a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens" and so we thank God for our many blessings.  

We are a wonderful country full of diverse cultures and backgrounds and so to what or who whom we are giving thanks to has many variations.  However, what we at Makes 3 wish to acknowledge is that there is something or someone that we all look toward as we are giving our thanks as we sit around our beautifully decorated tables and sumptuously prepared Thanksgiving meals.  Thanks-Giving.  What a tremendously powerful word. 

It’s amazing to realize that living in a state of thanks or gratitude will make you a happier and healthier person.  But it is true.  Grateful people are happier people.  Grateful people are healthier people.  It can be very hard to internalize this idea and to live an intentionally grateful life when our media and society have conditioned us to believe that gratitude comes after our life works out the way we want it to.  I’ll be happy and grateful after I get that promotion, or after I get that raise, or after I own a home, etc. 

The reality is that gratitude must precede these events in our lives in order for them to have any lasting happy effect.  Indeed, perhaps, gratitude must precede these events in order for them to occur at all.  By living in a state of gratitude and by sharing your blessings with the people you encounter in your everyday life you will grow and expand your own experience of happiness.  Moreso, you will expand it beyond the boundaries of your own, personal life experience by sharing your life force and by inspiring others to do the same.  Gratitude is contagious.

Luckily, even if you are not feeling particularly thankful and are wondering how you can possibly become grateful in a life where you see problems and obstacles, you can experience gratitude every day.  Behavioral scientists tell us that just by going through the motions of being thankful, the genuine experience of living in a state of gratitude will grow.  So try it today – pick three things to be grateful for, write them down, say them out loud, share them with someone and pass it on.  If you make this a daily practice, the real gratitude will grow and you will start to focus on the amazing things in your life that you already have.

We can change the world with one thankful thought at a time.

~The Makes 3 Organics® Team

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