Quotes About Gratitude

Enjoy now." If I can enjoy the present, I don't need to count on the happiness that is (or isn't) waiting for me in the future. The fun part doesn't come later, now is the fun part. That's another reason I feel lucky to enjoy my work so much. If you're doing something that you don't enjoy and you don't have the gratification of success, failure is particularly painful. But doing what you love is itself the reward.

I had everything that I could wish for; I wanted to make my home happier by appreciating how much happiness was already there.

Gratitude brings freedom from envy, because when you're grateful for what you have, you're not consumed with wanting something different or something more. That, in turn, makes it easier to live within your means and also to be generous to others.

Aaron Beck, founder of cognitive behavioral therapy, maintains that people find it easy to notice what their partners do wrong, but not what they do right, so he suggests keeping "marriage diaries" to track partners' considerate behavior; one study showed that 70 percent of couples who did this tracking reported an improved relationship.

I remember talking to a friend whose parents had been very involved in the civil rights movement. "They always said," he told me, "that you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don't expect other people to react in a particular way.

know how happy I am when one of them is very happy. How happy I was to

In particular, I'd realized that although I possessed all the elements of a happy life, too often I took my circumstances for granted and allowed myself to become overly vexed by petty annoyances or fleeting worries. I'd wanted to appreciate my life more, and to live up to it better.

Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances

To be happy, I needed to generate more positive emotions, so that I increased the amount of joy, pleasure, enthusiasm, gratitude, intimacy, and friendship in my life. That wasn't hard to understand.

Besides clarity of values, another kind of clarity supports habit formation: clarity of action. The more specific I am about what action to take, the more likely I am to form a habit. A habit to "be more mindful," for instance, is too vague to be a habit, but "have a moment of gratitude every time I walk into my apartment building" or "take a photo of something interesting every day" are concrete actions that can become habits.

book Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar

Reluctantly, Kazuko accepts one of the tomatoes. "This is absurd. You have nothing and you're giving us food," she says. He stares hard at her: "The less I have, the happier I am.

Becoming "native to a place" doesn't have to be about secured boundaries of blood and territory but can allude to a deep, growing knowledge of that place. The way one feasts on it and becomes nourished and gives thanks. And hands it over to be shared.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

And on the endless dusty ribbon of the highway, on sunken roads vaulted over by branches, on paths between stands of grain that rose to his knees, the sun on his shoulders and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the night's bliss, his spirit at peace and his flesh content, he would ride on his way ruminating his happiness, like someone who keeps savoring, hours later, the fragrance of the truffles he has eaten for dinner.

When we stop blaming the darkness, or ourselves, for having been walking in it, and decide, instead, to thank the Light for showing us the truth of our actual estate... then we turn the corner in our work to awaken conscience.

When you've worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you.

The upside of paying it forward far outweighs the downside of being exploited.

If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough. MEISTER ECKHART

Thank the people who helped you achieve results before they are gone. You'll regret not doing so if the opportunity passes.

Remember the opportunities that you were afforded. After you've "made it," provide opportunities to others.

In some way, you help me settle for what is . I come in the door in the evening and I think, I'm going to eat supper with someone who's going to make eating supper an occasion. And that's not a small matter.

I have often been asked how I felt when I first found myself on free soil," he wrote later. The answer was simple yet profound. "A new world had opened upon me," he said. "I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.

When life is a weariness and escape impossible, it is wonderful to have a friend who can bring us peace with the touch of a hand. After this Finna decided to tend the cow herself... Those were the good days. They were serene days and quite undemonstrative, like the best days in one's like; the boy never forgot them. Nothing happens; one simply lives and breathes and wishes for nothing more, and nothing more.