Gratitude
From 16Guidelines
What is Gratitude?
Gratitude celebrates our connections with other beings and our capacity to offer mutual support. The feeling of gratitude is an appreciation of another's generosity, the demonstration of gratitude is a thankfulness with a smile or a kind word.
Receiving gratitude restores our belief that we have a positive role to play in the world, and that our actions have very real consequences. It gives us confidence and encourages us to act in a positive way. It makes us feel good! The act of gratitude is in itself motivated by a generous spirit, which strengthens relationships and heals tensions. A word of thanks and an acknowledgement of someone's contribution to our wellbeing dissolves tension and creates ease between people.
We can be more natural when we actively recognise that someone has helped us in some way, no matter how trivial. We often thank shopkeepers, waiters and bus drivers, but it can be easy to forget to thank people who shape our lives in significant ways, like our parents, our partners and our friends. Gratitude is grounded in the wisdom that we are neither independent nor self-sufficient in this world, but part of an extraordinary continuum of events and beings on this planet. Gratitude helps us to celebrate that.
Quotes
"Thankfulness is the tune of angels."
- Edmund Spenser
"To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven."
- Johannes Gaertner
"If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents!"
- Ram Dass, USA
"Friendships begin with liking or gratitude-roots that can be pulled up."
- George Eliot
"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
- Marcel Proust
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