Is there a connection between gratitude and joy?

Is this year going to be a time when you experience more joy?

Well, if that is true you need the connection between gratitude and joy, then you are going to have to find ways to experience and live a life filled with gratitude. So how is it that we can experience a life of gratitude with so many challenges springing up in our lives?

I have been concerned about our world for some time now. This concern first emerged when I heard many North American’s complaining about their lives. This was because when you see people living in squalor or unpleasantness in many areas of the world, it appears that there is a big disconnect in realizing how good we in North America have life. Then almost 16 years ago when I was ‘hit’ by a condition called Nystagmus which caused me to be dizzy from morning until night. This led me to feeling nauseous every hour of the day, therefore my work ethic suffered greatly, and my attitude was not as buoyant or optimistic as it had been. I managed to raise my spirits but at times I was not the person you would have wanted to spend anytime with.

So how do we keep our attitudes and spirit up even in the midst of very challenging times?

For a long time, I have been itemizing my blessings or things that I was grateful for daily. You may be asking; “How can you express gratitude with a challenge?” Well the answer to that is the basis of this blog.

The answer is that I now view the challenges, issues or problems as blessings. You may be saying; how can problems be a blessing?

All that it takes is a shift in focus. The shift is one that moves from living a life as a prince or princess into one where all the challenges, issues or problems are opportunities to grow as a person. To become the person that cherishes the problems and accepts them as gifts to prove that I was not made of fluff. These challenges are opportunities to show what I was made of and that is a person of a strong and very resilient character.

So now when a challenge occurs I itemize it, because it makes me think very differently about my life, It makes me realize that I was put on this Earth to make the best of what happens in my life and to become all that I was created to be.

As I conclude I have a few questions for you to ponder;

• When the next challenge in your life occurs, how can you view it more optimistically?
• When are you going to start journaling all your ‘blessings’, so that you can start to grow into the person you were created to be?