“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”  

– William Arthur Ward

Being grateful for what is good about our lives is an important thing we can each do for ourselves.  It helps makes anything that is not-so-good-at-the-moment easier to deal with, and keeps us in a proper perspective so we can focus on all of the things that are amazing-at-the-moment!

I think it was Oprah Winfrey, a few years ago, that advocated a “gratitude journal” because she believed that expressing our appreciation adds to and intensifies the appreciation and gratefulness for all of the little things in our lives that we might otherwise overlook.  I (of course!) also advocate keeping a journal or notebook and using it, in part, for this reason.  It is a great place to jot down notes to yourself about the wonderful things in your life, including things that people have done for or said to you, and just list all that you have to appreciate about your life.  (Hopefully this takes you a while to do…)

Now, while I do believe that journals are a fabulous place for these thoughts of gratitude, expressing the actual gratitude to the people who have done or said something nice to you or have in some way given you something to be grateful for is much more important.

So, take a moment and reflect on the things that you have to be grateful for and wrote about in your journal.  Then, look at those things and if there is a person responsible for even one of them, take a moment to write a note of “thanks”, send a small gift or some flowers, or pick up the phone and thank them for it personally.  They may not realize that what they said or did had the impact on you that it has.  Share the gratitude.

This will be our (not so) Random Act of Kindness and Gratitude #3.

Thank you for reading!

~Melissa 🙂

PS…I came across this blog today and thought I would share it with all of you: http://gratitudecollections.blogspot.com/.