I hope you’re having a beautiful day. ♡
Here’s another light-filled ¤ Gem ¤
Probably the biggest initial “aha” moment was the realization that the results I was seeing in my life (mostly bad things at that time) were primarily a consequence of my habits. Whether I was angry, upset, happy, fearful, anxious, joyous, delighted — I finally realized that my emotions were essentially trained habits. I routinely reacted emotionally the same way to different situations out of habit.
The way I felt about things was a result of the way I habitually chose to feel about such things. That is why getting into the habit of being grateful (no matter what happens) is so powerful. You train yourself to habitually respond emotionally to literally anything and everything with gratitude. Only after your initial, habitual emotional response (gratitude) do you even bother to creatively intellectually reframe the situation to rationalize some reason for why you should be and can be thankful. For me, the most powerful way of training myself to attain that attitude of gratitude was to dedicate an entire month where I constantly mentally repeated to myself the words “Thank you” for literally everything that happened in my life moment to moment. I repeated it literally thousands of times every day. Sometimes I could immediately formulate a good reason to be thankful for whatever happened, and saying “Thank you” felt natural and appropriate. Whenever I couldn’t quickly find a good reason to be thankful, I said it anyway and practiced trying to feel it (with meaning) and simply chose to believe that everything that happened in my life was truly for my ultimate benefit in some way — even if I couldn’t see it at the time (or ever!). Of course, with so much practice at feeling thankful, you get better and better at quickly reframing events and situations to sincerely see how it is appropriate to feel thankful for everything and everybody that comes into your life — no matter how onerous or horrible it may appear to be at the time.
-W. Clifford Dean, Every Moment Gratitude
under1000skies 
I will put this comment on every post this week. I’m hosting a new 21-Day challenge on Kindspring in loving memory of Cliff: Every Moment Gratitude 2026. It begins the first week of January. (Right now it’s set for New Year’s Eve since that’s as far as the mechanic for the challenges allows at the moment. I’ll update it soon.) All welcome.
Speaking from personal experience, both my own, and in observing others, your behavioral choices almost Universally cause the issues. But the Good News is, the Universe is available to help you when you decide the flip the script.
What a great way to do so, just say Thank You. Even if the why adn the when take some time to formulate.
{{{John}}} I tried doing this gratitude practice after receiving Cliff’s letter in 2017/18. Wow. It is not easy. Worth it, though, if it extends life and helps the people around us by raising our energy (and shutting our mouths when needed). XD I had no idea how much I complained until I tried looking for gratitude for every single circumstance. I’ll keep trying. Well, like Zig Zigler said (or maybe it was Michael J. Fox) “Perfection isn’t possible, but if you chase perfection, you’ll hit excellence.” ♥