Gratitude is healthy!
Even more potent is the knowledge that filling your life with positive actions helps you become more effective at balancing out the negative. Each day can bring good news or bad, opportunities or the end of options, or positive health versus health scares. Interactions with the greater world such as people in work, daily life, or family can have positive aspects or challenges. How you use anger or calm, resentment or gratitude, can color the days so very differently.
It won’t happen overnight, but the care & feeding of gratitude in your life can make a profound difference in how you perceive the world. It can make you a powerful activist, when you come from a place where anger is balanced. You are better able to cope with bad news, or health trials when you can tap into a wellspring of gratitude for the good within your life.
I am grateful for every rescued life we have had the privilege to help here, and grateful for each person who has felt joy from being a part of what we do. Gratitude helps balance sadness or frustration I might feel seeing injustice in the world, or the persistence of animal agriculture. Gratitude gives me the ability to be an activist for the long haul, and to continue to care deeply in the face of adversity.
If you enter your day in a grateful state, you are not blind to adversity, you are in fact better able to cope with problems, and better equipped to cooperate with those who might be causing you difficulty. I am a big fan of reducing stress wherever possible, so a little gratitude goes a long way.
“Gratitude increases feelings of well-being and calm while decreasing stress levels. Decreased stress levels relates to improved ability to focus, and yes, to remember.” ~Andrea Francone (Mayo Clinic)
Our rescues at the Sanctuary clearly enjoy the love and care they receive. Visitors comment all the time about how relaxed, social and content our rescued farmed animals are here. We believe that in fact these animals experience gratitude as well. When a goat like Marky comes to us from a situation of little food or care within the clear threat of living where other animals are killed, to then live here with regular food and water, shelter and lavish attention and affection…well, the results in his attitude are clear to see.
Why not try gratitude?
“I am happy because I’m grateful. I choose to be grateful. That gratitude allows me to be happy.” ~Will Arnett
