Unpublished Work © 2012 Cristina Carlino

This Week’s Tiny Action for Big Transformation:

Take Gratitude Breaks

Hello, butterfly friends near and far.  Here we all are graced with another week of life spread before us. Are you ready to take flight?  Are you poised for new possibilities?  Is it just “Monday” or what the good folks at your office call, “the day they should just cancel?”   Or is it Monday, “your new TGI Friday because the kids have gone back to school and you’ve got the house back?   Wherever you may be today and wherever each of us may be headed tomorrow, I’m wondering – when has gratitude  ever not  carried us a very long way?

I love this quote by Meister Eckhart, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you’, it will be enough.”

If I have learned anything, it’s that prayers said are prayers heard and prayers of gratitude have got to be the best prayers of all. Even and especially when we don’t feel grateful for anything! Just to say thank you to the dirt your caterpillar crawls across is a wonderful place to start. Imagine if there were no trees to shelter us or to build our homes? How about the check out gal at the grocery store who remembers your name every week even though you can’t remember hers?  Or the evil villains in your life that tried to smash you before you could grow wings?  Don’t they deserve gratitude too for helping you rethink your flight plan?

Sound  like a stretch?   But what if before we can fly, we require some stretching?  Some days you can feel like you’re Gumby.  That’s where time-outs come in.    This is about taking the so little time necessary to build and stretch  the invisible gratitude  muscle  that can become as intuitive to us as our breaths.

So this week my tiny action for big change is to set your watch!  Set your phone, set your mind on stopping every hour.  And for one whole minute, just  look  outside you and inside you and say  “thank you.”  If you don’t have a minute to spare, 30 seconds will be enough.  Stick a  post-it on your fridge. Wear a band around your wrist to remind you.  Invite a friend to join you.  If you can’t think of what you’re grateful for, begin with the fact that in this minute you’re still alive. Then see what comes into your mind and heart next.

Let’s try just a week of these breaks and see if what comes next is more joy and ease and peace.   Gratitude   puts our past and our present into proper perspective and places our future back into the gentle hands where it can only belong.

Soon “just Monday” and every other day becomes filled with abundance.

And we are a living prayer.  I recognize there is so much to pray for in these times, old times and new times, too. But I honestly believe the good outweighs the bad. It always has.

With grace and gratitude,

Cristina