Count Your Blessings

In a church youth meeting recently, the question was asked: "Why should we be grateful?" Immediately, the thought came to me that "gratitude makes us happy." Last night, I received an email from a friend of ours, Marilyn, in which she said, "Count your blessings, not your trials." I thought that was great advice!

By counting our blessings and focusing on what is right in our lives, we'll find that we have a lot to be grateful for. Recognizing that, I think we're naturally happier. When we focus on what's wrong in our lives, our attitudes naturally turn sour. The same works with people. If you want to find something wrong with someone, you'll always succeed. If you search for some redeeming quality in everyone you meet, you'll always succeed. With the second attitude, the world looks brighter, humanity looks more decent and caring, and we, as individuals, are happier.

That doesn't mean we blind ourselves to what is wrong with the world. But our focus can remain on the positive things while recognizing evil and tackling our personal weaknesses, or other evils, one at a time. By focusing on what's negative, we may end up losing the power to turn those negatives into positives.

I learned a principle related to focus from Stephen R. Covey. I think it was in his original "Seven Habits" book. He taught that the circumstances of our lives can be modeled as two concentric spheres. The inner sphere represents things we can control and the outer represents everything in our lives that affects us, but is outside of our control. Covey claimed that by focusing on the inner sphere, the size of that sphere actually grows. By focusing on the outer sphere, the size of the inner sphere shrinks. I believe that's true. Not quite the same as focusing on the positive, but it illustrates that we magnify those things on which we focus. By focusing on the positive, we naturally magnify it and not only does the world seem more positive, but it actually becomes more positive. It probably doesn't become so just because of what we think, but because of how our thoughts and attitudes translate into actions.

If we want to be happy and have the power to make changes for good, I think a key principle is to focus on the positive. Count your blessings.