They will feel your appreciation even if you don’t tell them.
Gratefully I Choose You
There is a great paradox with those we love that the more we have them in our lives the more we get caught up in the mundane details of day to day life and the less we show them how much we appreciate them. But it is this very love and appreciation that led us to have them be in our lives so fully.
A while back I came across a great article on this phenomenon as it relates to romantic love called, Choose Her Every Day (Or Leave Her). He talks about using gratitude as a way to choose them every day. Here is the excerpt:
Choosing her would have meant focusing every day on the gifts she was bringing into my life that I could be grateful for: her laughter, beauty, sensuality, playfulness, companionship, and so … much … more. Sadly, I often found it nearly impossible to embrace – or even see – what was so wildly wonderful about her. I was too focused on the anger, insecurities, demands, and other aspects of her strong personality that grated on me. The more I focused on her worst, the more I saw of it, and the more I mirrored it back to her by offering my own worst behavior. Naturally, this only magnified the strain on our relationship … which still made me choose her even less.
This is so very true. The more we focus on the negative the more of that we find. But we can have it the other way too. We can shift our perspective to actively find the good in those we care about. When I see people I care about I often greet them with a hug. But I don’t always do this, especially for those I see more often. Again with that paradox, the natural tendency to begin taking those closest to us for granted.
How would our relationships shift if we greeted each other with a hug and if while we hugged them we thought of one thing we were grateful for about them? Maybe we could even take it one step further and write down our gratitude for them and even share our gratitude with them. I love this idea of choosing those we care about not only through sharing our time and space with them but by actively seeing the good in them. Through gratitude we are consciously choosing them in our hearts and minds.
Beauty is in everything and the key to discovery is to look for it always.
~Cheryl Nordyke
Think of someone you care about. What is one small thing you noticed about them today that you are grateful for?
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[su_note note_color=”#e7e7e7″ text_color=”#686767″ radius=”0″] My gratitude journey started in May 2011 and continues to this day. Thank you for being a part of it! A daily gratitude practice is simple. Write down three things you are grateful for each day. Download your free GratitudeGuide. My clients focus on gratitude and learn from their successes to make the positive changes they want in their lives. You can too. Call me to set up our first meeting 505.333.9336. [/su_note]