Archive for December, 2009

Gratitude and Healing
As we experience this holiday season and come to a conclusion of another year let us allow ourselves to be filled with gratitude for healing to occur in every area of our lives. Stress is absolutely high around the holiday seasons with many demands on every individual.
Enjoy the season but as we wind down the year and conclude and close many aspects that need closure, allow time to deal with those issues and time for healing. Most of all do not judge yourselves even if others do, be gentle especially with difficult circumstances that only you can comprehend. Sometimes we struggle to grasp why people around us are a certain way or why things happen the way they do. The only thing that we can control is our attitude. If you have people hurt you this year, forgive them with gratitude that you have done the best you can to be peaceful. If people walked all over you this year, honor yourself and proceed to deal with how you feel and allow healing to occur. If you have instigated those behaviors, evaluate if you have unfairly done the very things you want to forgive in others. If you have bring those feelings to a conclusion and deal with the parties involved if possible, talk it out and see if healing can occur. Many of what happens cannot be controlled, emotions are very powerful especially when your heart is open, just do the best you can and understand that no one is ‘bad’ or ‘good’, we all have to honor what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ within ourselves. Even if we wear masks outside, our true intentions are very clear and open to the ‘self’ we live in so we can fool others but not the spiritual part of us which is living within us.
These last weeks of this year 2009 can be used to evaluate and conclude your thoughts in all areas and build a new beginning of 2010 ushered in with gratitude and anticipation of the best things to come. When you bring something to a conclusion, you create new space and something better shows up. Our thoughts and intentions are very powerful. No matter what be honest within yourself of how you feel about all the matters in your life. Do not waste time judging others and what they have done to you leave that up to the universe and higher powers. Just concentrate on being authentic and real with yourself, since the only person who can change you is yourself, none other.
As for me I am tremendously grateful for my children who fill my life up with so much love and light. This has been a year of tremendous learning. I have met some of the most amazing human spirits this year and I am ever so grateful for them. I have faced some of the most difficult challenges personally as well but by grace I have come through all of them stronger and more alive. The biggest lesson I have learnt at the conclusion of this year is to honor myself and stand up to people when they try to walk all over you, this was big because I am so used to always being silent and ‘allowing’ others to have their way. So, it was a huge victory to finally honor my person.

2009’s last GratitudeMania will be hosted by Blue Angel Glenn Garnes on December 29th 6-8pm at
Homewood Suites in Columbia, MD
8320 Benson Dr
Columbia, MD 21045 US
[Those interested in purchasing a 'gratitude' blue earth marble go to the website below. Also read by previous post on how you can celebrate on Dec 29th at the same time from where you live]

The ‘gratitude’ blue earth marble has just arrived from Melbourne Australia and ready to greet the nation’s capitol! Please join us if you live in the Washington DC, Maryland or Virginia areas.

I am so very excited about 2010. Many new beginnings and wonderful exciting doors are opening up in my life and I am so grateful for this. I want to thank so many people who are in my life that makes me feel ever so grateful to have come this far and you beloved ones know who you are…so thank you!

A very blessed holiday season to you all and a beautiful 2010!!
Much gratitude
Elizabeth Zachariah

www.bluemarble4life.com
www.bluemarble4lifegroup.com

For those who need evidence about how critical gratitude and appreciation is for our wellbeing there is scientific based research, feel free to check out the links. At the end of this blog are some references. My intent here is not to discuss those research data but to suggest that our minds so rely on evidence we have failed to understand again and again that it is the very nature of believing its importance without seeing evidence which is the lesson we must learn.
PBS just aired Happiness 101 by Dr.Tal Ben-Shahar on how important gratitude is and to ‘ritualize’ this every single night. Dr. Ben-Shahar emphasizes how New Year’s resolutions fail because it is not done consistently.
Now the question is DO we need to have evidence to prove how important gratitude is? As a society many are focused on seeing this ‘evidence’, the show me the money mentality. Even if a person starts a ritual such as giving gratitude on New Year’s Eve, they continue to experience their outer environment which is ‘evidence’ for them that nothing is changing even with this ‘gratitude’ ritual. So they give up and they miss the point that it is not doe to achieve a particular outcome. Without BELIEF that the change is happening in the ‘inner’ self, not the outer environment, one cannot continue this ritual of giving gratitude, it will simply fair if you are doing it ONLY to get a certain outcome.
As we develop the gratitude muscle we must understand that it is to become who we are, it needs to become a virtue no matter what the outer circumstance is at that moment. Happiness IS a state of mind, it is not something we get, it is something we ‘are’, that we become, it cannot be a forced action, we cannot fake it and we cannot accumulate it with wealth. Yes things can give us a surge of elation but it is temporary ‘fixes’. We have to step out of our mental mind, stop rationalizing. Let’s go deep within and appreciate and be grateful within. Happy peaceful people just won’t elect to go to war and hurt other humans. Happy people don’t get angry frequently and hold a grudge or engage in road rage. Gratitude and appreciation is key in developing this peaceful and happy spirits of society and change the unhappiness that plague our world today. Parents, grandparents and all…we need to teach the kids of today about gratitude and apprciation. Most busy parents buy their way out of spending time with their kids and those kids don’t value the stuff or the abundance they live in. What will become of these kids? What will it take to make them ‘happy’ in a few years? a trip to the moon? We have lost our spirits in all the stuff, the daily grind that we don’t even know happiness or even where to start looking for it. Start with gratitude, just start doing it, you will see a change if you truly do it with humility.

I really had the opportunity to enjoy the first snow today. If you really took the time and looked at the beautiful snowflakes that gently come floating down, you will appreciate and be grateful for the magnificence of Mother Nature’s creativity. Yes we are all guilty of forgetting but here is a chance to remember and start changing that energy inside us to become more serene by developing that attitude that is ever so important, actually, not just important but critical in our lives and in our world today.
The frenzy stress of the holidays is yet another reason why we need to think through why gratitude and appreciation is important as a virtue developing deep within us.
At Blue Marble 4LIFE we are planning one last GratitudeMania to give thanks for 2009 and appreciate the blessings of 2010. Those who are part of our Facebook group (www.bluemarble4lifegroup.com) will receive an email with details. We encourage all of you to have your own GratitudeMania parties to focus on appreciation and gratitude. Go to our website www.bluemarble4life.com to learn more and if your feel so you can purchase a ‘gratitude’ blue earth marble for yourself and those you care about and begin this journey of gratitude with all of us who are connecting to create peace and harmony with an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE!
Peace and Joy this season,
Elizabeth
Links:
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/
http://www.acfnewsource.org/religion/gratitude_theory.html
http://www.cpbn.org/program/happiness-101-tal-ben-shahar