No Whining! (Being Grateful)

I generally ride the bus to and from work. My schedule is such that I get off work at 10:00pm, and I have about 12 minutes to catch the last bus going my way. Up until last night, I've made the bus every day.

Last night at work I got a call at my workstation at 9:58pm. I saw that the call was going to be longer than just a couple of minutes, so I was hoping that I could still make the bus anyway. I patiently and kindly took the customer's order, and realized about halfway through that I wasn't going to be riding the bus home. When I was through with the call, I logged off, punched out, and said goodnight to my coworker.

It's a 3 mile walk home from work, and my first thought was, "Well, this sucks." It was chilly, windy and raining lightly - not my favorite weather. As I began my walk, I started looking for someone to blame. There weren't a lot of targets - I couldn't really be mad at the caller. I could have passed the call on to somebody else, but I didn't feel that was right, for either the customer or for any of my coworkers. I decided that walking home in the rain was my doing, because last year my driver's license was revoked because I earned a DUI and I sold my car. 

Fortunately, I avoided going into self-pity/I'm going to give up mode. I began to count my blessings in this scenario:

• I had proper clothing for the weather - I was warm and cozy, despite the cold wind and rain.
• It's not a hardship for me to walk 3 miles, so
• I'm grateful for my legs.
• I'm grateful for my heart.
• I'm grateful for my lungs.
• I'm grateful for my overall good health.
• I'm grateful the wind is at my back (that was a nice bonus, as usually the wind would have been in my face, and last night it wasn't).
• I'm grateful I live in an area where it's relatively safe for me to walk at night.
• I had forgotten my earphones (that sucked, too), so I'm grateful I was able to direct my thinking into gratitude and do constructive thinking on the way home.
• I'm grateful I was walking in the city rather than the country - I felt more secure.

And on it went. I made it home safely and in a good mood.

Gratitude doesn't prevent sucky situations, but what it did for me last night was allow me to go through the situation without going into blaming, self-recrimination, or worse, self-pity, which leads to depression and resentment. Gratitude allows me to see that I am richly blessed when I look at my situation from a different angle.

Moreover, a consistent practice of gratitude allows me to maintain a higher vibration throughout my days. I am better able to see the good around me and in me. 

What I focus on grows. When I focus on the negative, I have more negative on which to focus. I'm living in it. When I put gratitude lenses in my glasses, my blessings grow, and the negative diminishes.

Namasté,

Ken