Happy Thanksgiving - a National Day of Gratitude

Tomorrow is my very favorite holiday!  I've been discouraged from celebrating because I was advised that every day should be a day of cheerful thanksgiving.  That may be true, but it's in the national interest for a day to be devoted to nothing but gratefulness, in my opinion.  People's lives are so hectic and inflated with the urgency of unimportant things that I see no harm in reserving one day out of 365 to reflect on the good things that we do have.

There are the the obvious good bounties: clean air, clean water, a roof over my head, food in the fridge, the soothing purr of my cat, a reliable car.  I'm wondering though if I can extend gratitude to life's pains and struggles.  It is in pain, struggle and reflection that we are forged from soft babies into tough people with integrity, resilience, and the ability to withstand future hardships. 

If we are never tested, no one can know with certainty if we can be relied upon.

I am grateful for my trials, the tests I passed, as well as the tests I failed.  In the end, they gave me answers to questions of my state of readiness: ready to go forward in one area, not ready to go forward in another.  It is at the points of pain and disappointment that we have opportunity to learn the most.  Easy success rarely teaches anyone anything; it often leads to arrogance.  Missteps on the other hand, often teach humility, and if we go back and try again, we also learn persistence.  Thank you, Life, for giving me so many chances to get better and improve.

I'm also grateful for my mind.  I do my best to be self-correcting and to exercise my power of choice even over the choices of thoughts within my own mental arena.  What I'm finding is the inner critic doesn't exist solely in my own head.  She invades everyone's thoughts.  That callous, jealous old crone.  She always negative, seeing the worst possible outcome in literally EVERY single situation.  Truth be told, every once in a while, she's right and she sees what can go wrong, which gives me a chance to craft a plan to avoid error.  For this, I'm grateful.

This doesn't mean she's always right.  The inner critic has an uncanny knack for predicting catastrophe, like 100% of the time.  Clearly, her forecasting skills are limited.  Having become aware of that, when she says I'm ugly, unlovable, an idiot, untalented or utterly hopeless, I just placate her and carry on.  "Yes, yes, I'm totally inept, here's a bone to chew on.  Now be quiet.  I have work to do, and I suspect I'll do it well." 

My biggest gratitude is this: I'm under absolutely NO obligation whatsoever to believe the inner critic.  Her accuracy in forecasting is worse than the weatherman's.  She's at 1% at best, which means, I've got a 99% chance of success in any endeavor, if I listen instead to the truth, which is:

Nothing beats a failure like a try.

As for trial by fire, as a tangential note, I like to think of the products of my mind (ideas) as natural resources, like crude oil or gold or iron or even water.  In their raw states, ideas and natural resources are damn well near useless.  Crude oil must undergo a refining process to be useful to people.  Gold must also be refined and often alloyed to increase its strength.  Even water must be purified.  The same with ideas.  No matter how elegant or beautiful or original my idea might seem at first blush, it must be tested rigorously if it stands a chance at survival.

In that vein, I try not to marry every single idea that springs from my head.  On the opposite side of that coin, I try not to crush them before I've had a chance to consider them.  Thank you Life, for humility and discernment.

Incomplete list of gratitudes:

Napoleon Hill
Stephen R. Covey
Brian Tracy
Rev. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.
Louise Hay and Hay House publications
Tom Bilyeu and Impact Theory YouTube channel
My super adorable furry dumpling of a cat
Melanie, for checking in on me
Shantell, for showing me the lighter side of life
Renee, for photographing all the poignant beauty of rural decay
Lily, for introducing me to the writers group and so much more
Life, for the joy and pain, food and hunger, opportunity and closed doors and tiny little lights on alternative paths, laughter and jokes aplenty, wonder and monotony.

It all counts

Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie
Happy Thanksgiving