Forty ~ It's so hard

It is easy to say thank you for the simple things... Thanks for the ride, thanks for the lunch, etc.  Why is it embarrassing say thanks for being given something big that I couldn't have accomplished on my own?  When someone does us a favor, deep down we know we owe them something.  If we find it too embarrassing to say thank you, it's because we really want to avoid admitting that we owe this person something that honestly we can't repay.  The closes we can come to repaying the favor is by paying our debt of gratitude.  The bigger the favor a person did for us, the bigger the debt we have.  With big debts, sometimes we would prefer to pretend they just don't exist.

When someone we don't like does us a favor it is a great opportunity to upgrade our happiness.  It can be a catalyst for us to start to see them in a better light than we previously saw them.  If they have done something kind for us then they MUST have some good qualities.  When we are strong enough to admit we may have been wrong about how we perceived another person, we are on the road to upgrading our levels of joy immensely.  Saying thank you is not lowering ourselves, its in fact being big, admitting our debts and repaying them - we are making ourselves higher and better people when we do this. 

Sometimes we overlook all the good and kind things that those closes to us do for us.  The magnitude of what our parents, teachers, siblings, spouse and children do is so great that we actually become desensitised to appreciating it.  If we could imagine a complete stranger doing the exact same things for us, we would really know how to notice and appreciate all the good our closest ones do for us.

Think of the 3 most important gifts you've been given in life - have you adequately thanked the giver for them?  If not, thank one of them today.  (If the person is no longer alive, you can still verbalize your gratitude and pretend they are standing in front of you.)

It's a fantastic feeling to go back over our lives and work out who we owe a debt of gratitude to and then to actually pay it by saying thank you.  The person who we thank will be so surprised.  (they'll never expect it)  We will feel good about ourselves, because we all love the pleasure of making another person happy.  We will also have sense of feeling lighter.  There will be more bounce in our step, song will pour forth from our lips and we'll smile more readily, because deep down we will actually feel the weighty debt of gratitude gone and instead we will feel our self worth soaring.

Warren, S. 2010, 7 Ancient Keys To Happiness, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform