Gratitude Counterstrike Part 2

So it's been a week, and I've been practicing my goal to launch the Gratitude Counterstrike.

What I noticed:

1. I feel calmer after I've expressed gratitude. It definitely shifts my mood. We all have to deal with moments of frustration, being human beings. However, being human beings, we also have the ability to choose to take another path.

2. It takes frequent reminders to practice this. I'll have to make it a lifelong practice to get the best benefit. Yet this is a practice that costs nothing and pays in peace. I bet the peace feels stronger over time.

3. I found myself a few times about to complain or judge and stopping myself simply because I felt like I'd rather not be expressing gratitude just to counterstrike something I knowingly said or thought. This is half out of laziness for not wanting to be redundant with what I express gratitude for, and half out of wanting gratitude to be my first instinct, not my second.

So, launches will continue. Or we can get to a point where there's no counterstrike but instead, a Gratitude PREEMPTIVE strike. This is even better. This is if we're aiming for that first instinct to be gratitude.

Can you imagine it? That automatically, when life throws you challenges, whether small or large, our first instinct would be to express thankfulness for something, even the challenge itself for giving us an opportunity for growth.
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Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.

Thich Nhat Hanh
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