It seems a long time since I remembered all I have to be grateful for. Perhaps that's why it's been such a long time since I've been really happy.

For the first time I realized that gratitude and joy were connected, like conjoined twins. I couldn't be happy because I wasn't grateful and I wasn't grateful because I wasn't allowing myself to be. I was too busy hunting the next prize to appreciate the prize already at home. What I had was never enough, not because of the deficit in what I had but because of the deficit in me.

There are none so impoverished as those who deny the blessings of their lives.

We can bemoan what we have lost, or we can be grateful to have been blessed with something to mourn.

When you're struggling with lack, it's easy to become obsessed with all you don't have and forget what you do. It was nice to be reminded of all I had to be grateful for.

When you're struggling with lack, it's easy to become obsessed with all you don't have and forget what you do.

Never again should you wonder what you have to be thankful for.

Are you breathing? Are you here? Did you just take a breath? Are you about to take another? Do you have a habit of regularly doing this? Gift. Gift. Gift. Whatever else has happened in your life—failure, pain, heartache, abuse, loss—the first thing that can be said about you is that you have received a gift. Often

Begin whatever you're doing by remembering that you are here and you have been given a gift.

Throwing yourself into it begins with being grateful that you even have something to throw yourself into.

If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.