What are you thankful for? Gratitude and appreciation are shortcuts to happiness and joy! Really? Yes! Try it. Make a point that from now you are going to be thankful, grateful and appreciative of everything that shows up in your reality. Why? Because in each circumstance, there is a hidden gem. It is so easy for us to be caught up in what IS and keep asking ourselves: why me? Then we can turn this to another question: Why not me? What is the lesson in this? What is this showing me? What is my Soul, Higher Self, guiding me to?
What are you thankful for? Okay, hindsight is always a brilliant teacher. Years ago, during the time I was in exile, in the UK, I could not visit nor communicate with my family in South Africa, this is what happened to me, and taught me a valuable lesson:
I had saved enough money to travel to South Africa, to visit my family, I had not seen for years. I escaped South Africa’s Apartheid regime and came into the UK as an asylum seeker. I had obtained a British Citizenship through naturalisation and had a British passport. So I thought I would visit Mama, who I missed desperately. But before I purchased flight tickets, I thought of writing to the Home Office to find out if it was now alright for me to travel to South Africa, to visit my family.
The reply from the Home Office said that, since I was born in South Africa, the British Government would not protect me, were I to be arrested, on my arrival in South Africa. Then with all the money that I had saved, ready for my travels to South Africa, I chose to buy furniture. The furniture I felt was classic and would be with me for years, without a need to purchase any, ever again, for it was timeless.
Gratitude and Appreciation Are Shortcuts to Happiness and Joy!
Fast forward, three years later, I decided to visit my daughters for a weekend in London. At the time I lived in Leeds, West Yorkshire. I asked a friend’s niece to look after my house while I was down in London. Early on Friday morning I packed my car and drove to London. While in London, early on a Saturday morning I received a telephone call from my friend, telling me that she had just been to my house and brought her niece back home, because there were intruders who frightened her niece, but fortunately her niece had the door locked in the bedroom.
The intruders had run away on hearing the girl’s scream! Nothing was taken, my friend told me. I thanked GOD and The Universe that this girl had sense to lock the bedroom, which I had never locked and did not even know that it locked, as I always slept with the door wide open, and the door was the old fashioned type lock and had never bothered to lock. I told my friend that I was not going to return straight away as there was nothing that I could do and I had planned to be with my daughters during the weekend.
On my return on the Monday, the house was bare. On all four levels. Totally cleared, even the cooker from the kitchen had been taken. Whoever it was, had seen that the girl had left and the house was free to be cleared. The police did their bit, telling me that there are thieves who still for orders, already made! I laughed on hearing this because it was all so new to me. I had never experienced burglary in all the years I lived in the UK. So the insurance paid up.
What Are You Thankful For?
The very week that I received money from the insurance company, I received a telephone call from the same friend, telling me that an amnesty had been declared in South Africa, prior to the release of Mandela from prison. This meant that I could visit Mama in South Africa! Hooray! I thanked the burglars! I thanked GOD! I thanked my Ancestors! I thanked the furniture for going away and I thanked just about anything I could thank.
This was a GOD given Gift to me. Returning the money I had initially saved to go visit Mama, via the burglary! And at that time, the business I had started doing was not doing well, and the insurance money came in true Divine Timing! So, I went in 1993, for the first time in twenty-six years of being in exile, to South Africa, to meet my family and relatives, who I had thought I would never see alive.
What Are You Thankful For?
I am now thankful for everything that happens in my life and I also know from what I feel when I am grateful, thankful and appreciative, the joyous feelings that just continue being with me.
Make a point that from now you are going to be thankful, grateful and appreciative of everything that shows up in your reality. Why? Because in each circumstance, there is a hidden gem.
With thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation, more things to be thankful for show up and then more reasons to be thankful. It does not mean that as you continue being grateful, there are never going to be moments when you do not see, hear or experience something that will hurt or make you feel sad, however, you will be better able to go quickly within you, and choose to connect to your true self of appreciation, knowing that whatever it is, may have something for your that you will later be thankful for.
Stay Blessed.
