Gratitude and Surrender

By karen | November 19, 2007

On October 31, Alex Blackwell from The next 45 years tagged me for a really great project, The Think Different Challenge. It was started by Peter from I will change your life.com. Here is an excerpt from the original call from Peter.

The Think Different Challenge is all about finding something in your life you currently have negative thoughts or feelings toward (e.g. work or your mother-in-law), and deciding to look at it differently. It is about realizing that some things are just a part of life, so we may as well try to find the positives in them.

It is now November 19 and I am just responding. I’m sure that Alex probably thought that I had just ignored the tag. But I really hadn’t. I just feel good about most things in my life and I couldn’t think of something currently to look at differently. Of course, there are a few minor things but I didn’t care to write about them. There is always the weather but in my area it has been so perfect and beautiful that I would never complain. I am wondering about the snow and the cold though, as in when will it get here. The ski resorts are opening late, but they can break out the snow machines. Can‘t change the weather and you won’t hear me complaining about the nice days!

No complaints here. But a recent conversation with my BFF (that would be my husband) reminded me of how I changed some thinking in the past and turned life around. I wanted to write about it as part of the Season of Gratitude but it also fits very well into the
Think Different Challenge, so it can be a part of both.

Years ago, we went through some very difficult financial times. I don’t want to go into great detail about the problems but just to say it was challenging and there were times that we wondered if we would ever get through it. The other day as we were talking, Kevin asked me “what turned it around for us?” All I could answer was what turned it around for me. When I thought about it I knew right away. What turned everything around for me was two things.

Gratitude

Yes, times were tough but that was when I really learned about the Power of Gratitude. I realized that no matter what was happening if I could just think about what I was grateful for and what I was happy about then I felt better. At that time feeling better meant everything. Just feeling the gratitude was enough.
Gratitude and Appreciation can change your Life just by changing your focus.

And Surrender.

For me it really helped to surrender to what was. We were in a difficult situation and no amount of worrying, fretting, or stressing about it seemed to change it. We always had big dreams and we always wanted so much from life but at that time it wasn’t happening. It really helped to let go and let whatever happened happen. Trying to control everything was just stressing me out and making life worse and when I let go and realized that my favorite song as a kid was true

“Que Sera’, Sera, whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see, Que Sera’, Sera’”.

Sure I could hold on tight and try to control outcomes and endings but I had been struggling with that for years and it seemed that that was how we got into the situation in the first place!
Letting go felt really good but the most wonderful thing is that letting go turned everything around.

Gratitude and Surrender turned everything around for me personally but it also helped to share that Gratitude and Surrender with my life partner. Soon after, some of our fondest dreams came true. Our family started to grow and as for the financial problems, well, my husband went from wishing he could just make $3000 a month on the Internet to over $500,000.00 in the next 18 months. We achieved some great success and our lives turned around completely.

Because I chose to think differently about Life.