Gratitude by Melody Beattie (1 of PJ's favorites)

[Guest guest]

This is taken from the book "Gratitude: Affirming the Good Things in Life" by Melody Beattie published by Hazelden. "Sometimes in life things happen too fast. We barely solve one problem when two new problems surface. We're feeling great in the morning, but we're submerged in misery by nightfall.Every day we face interruptions, delays, changes, and challenges.

We face personality conflicts and disappointments. Often when we're feeling overwhelmed, we can't see the lessons in these experiences.One simple concept can get us through the MOST STRESSFUL of times. It's called GRATITUDE. We learn to say THANK YOU for these problems and feelings. THANK YOU for the way things are. I don't like this experience, but THANK YOU anyway.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. Gratitude makes things right. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons.

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and

creates a vision for tomorrow.

In the following pages you'll see how deprived thinking turns good things into less or nothing, and how grateful thinking turns all things into more. You'll see how you can use affirmations to move from feeling deprived to deserving. And, finally, we'll talk about enhancing the good things in your life by tapping in to these basic human skills: self-care, acceptance, setting goals, communication, and making decisions.

Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. We can start with who we are and what we have TODAY, apply gratitude,

then let it work its magic. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude's power.

This is a book to remind you of that power."This was from the introduction to this "Gratitude" book.

The capital letter words were italicized in the book.

Melody Beattie also wrote "Codependent No More", "Beyond Codependency", "The Language of Letting Go", and "Codependent's Guide to the Twelve Steps."

** I highly recommend this Gratitude book & all books by

Melody Beattie!