Gratitude is being thankful and being ready to show appreciation.
Well, first of all, no human being can entertain two thoughts at the same time. You can not think about up and down at the same time. You think about one and then the other.
And second but not least important, we each have a communication highway, if you will, within us. Meaning that our thoughts influence our emotions, and our feelings influence our thoughts.
This is an excellent place to point out the fact that we as humans are formed, for lack of a better term, from three parts. Mind, body, and spirit.
Our minds produce thoughts, our bodies produce and experience emotions, and our spirit should be the master of those two.
Your spirit should have dominion over your mind and your body. The soul should decide what thoughts you entertain and which ones you want to discard. The soul should choose the emotions you want to feel.
But because we are disconnected from God, our spirit is weak. So weak, in fact, that we may not even perceive it.
And we live our entire lives with the best part of us absent.
If we want to change that, we should start a personal and daily relationship with God. We set aside time first thing in the morning and last thing at night for prayer and meditation to God and with Him. And by doing that, our spirit, our soul gets stronger and stronger.
After some time and practice, we become more aware of our thoughts and emotions. When we are aware of them, we can choose and change them.
For example, the next time I feel frustrated and negative thoughts start to come into my mind as a result of that feeling, I can choose to think about gratitude and the things around me that I am grateful for, and immediately, my feeling of frustration disappears, and it is replaced with the feeling of gratitude.
And now to conclude all that. Start a personal daily relationship with God first thing in the morning and the last thing before you go to bed. Only that can make your spirit, your soul, strong and healthy. A healthy and strong soul has absolute dominion over the body and the mind.
And by that, you can choose what you think, when you think it, and for how long you want to think it. What you feel and the intensity of that feeling.
Not to mention that you can now choose the way you want to express yourself.
Not everything that you think or feel should be expressed.
Like Winston Churchill once said, courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
With love, yours truly, Cristian.