No matter what ups and downs\u00a0we have experienced in our lives, there have always been a million blessings.\u00a0 Sometimes we forget to acknowledge or even recognize those blessings because there are so many other things to easily get distracted by.\u00a0 And when you have always had certain blessings in your life, it\u2019s easy to take them for granted or forget to even consider them blessings\u2026that is until you lose them, and then it becomes glaringly obvious that what you used to take for granted truly was a blessing in your life.<\/p>\n
So the question becomes, how do we make sure to appreciate and recognize the blessings we already have in our life so we don\u2019t fall into the trap of taking them for granted?\u00a0 I have thought a lot about that lately.\u00a0 Especially as my youngest child is about to begin her Senior year of High School.\u00a0 Where did the time go?\u00a0 What happened to my little boy and girl who were running around with a baseball cap and a big bow on their heads?\u00a0 I thought I had so much time to enjoy their growing up\u2026until I blinked and suddenly we were already there.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearn to appreciate what you have before time makes you appreciate what you had.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I find myself wishing I had appreciated every moment of their childhood just a little bit more.\u00a0 I find myself wishing I had stepped away from the computer or turned off a TV a little more often just to spend a few more precious moments out playing in the yard with them.\u00a0 But those moments have now passed and the opportunities are no longer there.\u00a0 Unfortunately that is the danger of taking things we have for granted \u2013 by the time you come to your senses the opportunity has usually passed.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cNever take someone you love for granted. Hold every person close to your heart because you might wake up one day and realize that you lost a diamond while you were too busy collecting stones.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n So the real goal should be to recognize those precious blessings we have in life while there is still time to appreciate them fully.\u00a0 Things like our children, our spouse, our family, our health, our sight, our hearing, our bodies, our time, our talents, our home, our cars, our electronic devices, our food, our job, our clothing, our education, our memories, misfortunes we have avoided\u2026..the list of blessings we have is huge if we start to truly list everything out.\u00a0 So how do we keep our minds in the right spot to continuously be grateful for those blessings so we don\u2019t fall into the trap of taking them for granted?<\/p>\n Here are five suggestions that might help:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Stay in the present moment.\u00a0 We spend a tremendous amount of time lamenting about the past and worrying about the future.\u00a0 We have to stop that.\u00a0 We need to live in the right now \u2013 live in this very day.\u00a0 When someone talks to us listen.\u00a0 When our children need us, be there.\u00a0 Live as though today is the only day and your job is to make every second of it count.\u00a0 Let the past go and stop worrying about tomorrow\u2026focus on today and make it the very best day ever, so that if it ever does turn out to be your last day on earth you will feel good about how you spent it.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Love what you have.\u00a0 Look around you today and recognize that what you have could be so much less and so much worse!\u00a0 Doing that will help you recognize that you should feel incredibly grateful that things are not so much worse than they are because they can always, always get worse.\u00a0 So celebrate and love all that you do have today.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Do something kind for someone else today.\u00a0 By doing service for someone else it helps see beyond us and it immediately creates a feeling of gratitude for all that we have.\u00a0 Make sure the people you love most are the people who receive service from you first.\u00a0 Don\u2019t ever let them come in second in your life.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Keep a running list of all the things you are grateful for by your bed and add to it at the end of each day before you go to sleep.\u00a0 You will be truly amazed at how long your list can become.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 At the end of each day get down on your knees and thank God for every good thing in your life.<\/p>\n Recognizing and remembering all the good in your life is the best way to feel genuinely happy.\u00a0 Gratitude is a powerful tool to help make your life into everything you dream it to be:<\/p>\n \u201cGratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n ~Amy<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No matter what ups and downs\u00a0we have experienced in our lives, there have always been a million blessings.\u00a0 Sometimes we forget to acknowledge or even recognize those blessings because there are so many other things to easily get distracted by.\u00a0 And when you have always had certain blessings in your life, it\u2019s easy to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[839,501,500,410,63,753,240,1920,1562,1915,551,1911,122,83,51,1919,7,792,29,55,180,246,1146,463,12,1912,35,77,522,53,1075,1769,242,1031,1918,1665,576,1917,354,1050,496,519,112,1914,145,1682,1916,408,28,78,1913,1692,1462],"class_list":["post-3667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-acknowledge","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-blessing","tag-blessings","tag-childhood","tag-children","tag-clarity","tag-clothing","tag-computer","tag-daughter","tag-distracted","tag-distractions","tag-experience","tag-family","tag-food","tag-future","tag-gifts","tag-god","tag-happiness","tag-happy","tag-health","tag-high-school","tag-home","tag-husband","tag-lose-them","tag-love","tag-moment","tag-moments","tag-motivation","tag-opportunities","tag-parent","tag-parenting","tag-past","tag-playing","tag-pray","tag-prayer","tag-precious-moments","tag-present","tag-recognize","tag-self-worth","tag-self-esteem","tag-self-improvement","tag-senior-year","tag-service","tag-son","tag-spend-time","tag-take-for-granted","tag-talents","tag-time","tag-trap","tag-tv","tag-ups-and-downs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3667"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3679,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions\/3679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}