Count Your Blessings

We all have eyes; but we just see into things and future and never look into it with our spirits. Yes we all have tunnel vision. We don’t have a broader perspective. We believe that it will be dark at the end of the tunnel, and all through our journey we are afraid of this darkness, which we are not even sure of. But once we come out of the tunnel, we see a bright sunny green area. We are witnessing it right before our eyes, but since we believe that the other side to be dark we are not able to accept this sunny side and still feel that something is wrong and try to figure out what is going to happen.

We perceive the future in a way we want it to be and we do not allow God to play his role. We try to determine the future with what we have now. We firmly believe that what we go through now is the final one.

When we are dealing with life problems we always think only ‘why it happened? How it happened? Who is responsible?’ We continuously ruminate over these questions and we are not able to accept what has happened. Instead of thinking why it happened, we need to think about taking steps to solve it. To solve any problem we need to have a wider vision. Doubts and disbelief obstruct our vision. We always grumble about what we don’t have. We always feel that our life has no meaning and that we have nothing to do. Whenever we ask people about their life, they have nothing to feel grateful about and they just complain.

Our sole purpose on this earth is to find our purpose, but when life is in so much confusion how can we find our true meaning? The simple way to find meaning in life is to count on your blessings. You might ask, ‘am I really blessed? Does God love me?. The truth is you are really blessed and because of this blessing you are on this earth. Let’s see how to count on our blessings taking into account our complaints. Now take a piece of paper and write about all the major complaints in your life.

 My Major complaints about my life

1.      I am suffering from breast cancer

2.      I have a broken family

3.      I am a failure

4.      ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

5.      ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

So these are the complaints in your life. Many a time our problem seems big, because we are not able to accept it. So as a first step, let’s accept our problem. In front of each of your complaint add a ‘yes’

Adding Acceptance to your complaints

1.      Yes! I am suffering from breast cancer

2.      Yes! I have a broken family

3.      Yes! I am failure

4.      Yes!--------------------------------------------------

5.      Yes!--------------------------------------------------

Once you accept your complaints it will give you the courage to face your problems rather than running away from it. After acceptance count on your blessings. I can hear you scream ‘what! Blessings huh?’. Yes we are all blessed. Blessing need not be just money it can anything right from your personal quality, social support, money etc. Now add Yet/but statement after your complaint.

Adding ‘yet/but’ statements

1.      Yes! I am suffering from breast cancer, yet

2.      Yes! I have a broken family, yet

3.      Yes! I am failure, yet

4.      Yes!-------------------------------------------------- yet

5.      Yes!--------------------------------------------------yet

When you add ‘yes’ before your complaints it help you to accept the reality without ignoring any element of yourself. When you added ‘yet’ at the end of your complaint it gives a feeling that thought we have complaints there is still a hope for better things. It helps us to identify the other options and resources we have at our hand. Before adding our blessing to our list of complaints we need to first analyze your strength and weakness. Your strengths can be anything like quality of being kind, quality of establishing good relationship with others, be helpful etc and weakness can be all those things that prevent your strength from coming up. Your strengths are your real blessings.

My strengths

1.      I am kind enough

2.      I have good relationship with others

3.      I always try to understand the problem of others

4.      ----------------------------------------------------------

5.      ---------------------------------------------------------

My weakness

1.      I get anger often

2.      I give up easily

3.      I tend to view things negatively

4.      ---------------------------------------------------

5.      ---------------------------------------------------

Now add your blessings to the list of complaints

 Adding blessings

1.      Yes! I am suffering from breast cancer, yet I am kind. God has blessed me with this quality

2.      Yes! I have a broken family, yet I am generous

3.      Yes! I am failure, yet I have also succeeded most of the time.

4.      Yes!-------------------------------------------------- yet

5.      Yes!--------------------------------------------------yet

If we analyze your life, most of the time we are focusing only on the complaints and we don’t feel grateful for the things God has given us. So for each of the quality we poses let’s add a thank you note.

Adding thank you note

1.      Yes I have breast cancer, yet I am kind. God has blessed me with this quality. I can’t see people suffer and I do my best to wipe away their tears. Thank you God for giving me this quality and I promise you, that I will make the best use of this quality.

2.      Yes! I have a broken family, yet I am generous. God has blessed me with this quality. Thank you God-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- and I promise you, that I will make the best use of this quality.

Gratitude is one of the best medicines for aching heart. Once we express our gratitude to God for the blessing we overflow with love and we start believing the blessing. After expressing gratitude, don’t stop there. Think about how you are going to add value to the quality you posses and how you are going to make the best use of this quality. Ask these questions to yourself.

 Contemplating on adding ‘values’

1.      What I am going to do in my life?

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2.      If I am not happy with my present life style, how I am going to change it?

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3.      What gives me real happiness beyond these complaints?

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4.      How can I create a difference in my life?

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5.      How can I be a role model to others?

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6.      What difference I am going to create in other’s life?

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7.      What I am going to give back in return to my life?

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Don’t rush to find answers for these questions. Before you start filling the answers, take a deep breath and with full gratitude contemplate on these questions.

Adding value to the quality

Yes! I have breast cancer, yet I am kind. God has blessed me with this quality. I can’t see people suffer and I do my best to wipe away their tears. Thank you God for giving me this quality and I promise you, that I will make the best use of this quality. I need to act on this blessing. I wish to come out of the depressed feel caused by this cancer. I wish to change my life style. My real sense of happiness is not money but overcoming this depressed feeling and leading a life I wish. First I need to be compassionate towards me. I can understand the pain of breast cancer survivors. Instead of just ruminating about my problem, why don’t I stretch out and help other breast cancer survivors. When I think about my problem alone, it grows but when I reach out to others it heals.

Once you have decided how to add quality to your life, decide about the actions that are needed to achieve it.

1.      How I am going to help other breast cancer survivors?

One option is I can start a self help group for these breast cancer survivors or help the children of breast cancer survivors to cope with the situation.

2.      If I am going to help the children of breast cancer survivors to cope with the situation, how am I going to do it?

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3.      What are the probable problems that I will face in putting the quality in action?

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4.      How I am going to overcome the problems?

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Once you stop focusing on deficits and focus on blessings you can feel the miracle in each and everything you witness. Believe that you are born with abundance of blessing. Complaints you face in your life are blessings in disguise. All events happen in your life for a reason. Remember God will never give anything which you cannot handle. Yes you can, because you are blessed.