Thanking While Thinking

I walked a few yards between taking each of these pictures this morning, just feet from our house. The awe of Nature is a daily source of grate-fulness and generative energy for me. Lately, that same Nature, in the form of cold and gray days stacked one after the other, has also gotten my disdain.

Each scene was a welcome sight in the clear blue sky. The moon still aglow as it set, and rich colors leading the way for the arriving sun.

Nature may disappoint on a small scale, but it never disappoints me in the grand scheme. The weather is the weather. We like to complain, but acceptance is a better route. And with it, a more full joy when a morning like this one arrives.

As I listened to a TEDx talk yesterday by Dr. Kerry Howells, How thanking awakens our thinking, I heard something in a new way and I really appreciated it. She said

“If we thank while we think, we think in a more awake and engaged way. If we thank while we think, we think better.”

My best thinking brought me to active alcoholism and has kept me stalled out in my recovery many times since. My best thinking held me back, got in my way. I needed healthier thinking to reach new growth and transformation.

Living gratefully has become one of my tried and true ways to achieve more clarity and insight. Daily work for my daily disease of alcoholism is also daily work that brings me a better perspective, a healthier self-perception. To get me out of my own self-defeating thoughts is a good way to start today, any day.

Awaken! Onward!