Being Grateful

I know it sounds completely counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. Giving gratitude during tough times. How nonsensical, not to mention challenging, is that?

How many times a day do you give gratitude for your gifts, for your family and for the blessings of your life? I’ll admit it. Some days I forget to make my gratitude intentional, and then when I realize I haven’t done so, I understand why my day is off balance. “Oh, that’s why I’m not fully present!” “Oh, that’s why everything I do seems to be slightly off!”

Life can feel like a litany of lessons learned. I bet I could fill a library with my lessons. A lot of what I’ve had to learn came wrapped in suffering, fear, uncertainty…

Every year on Thanksgiving Day someone will ask you what you are grateful for. This is fitting. At its heart, Thanksgiving is a holiday about celebrating life. It is about remembering the things that are truly important and cherishing the special people in our lives…

Are you learning to love your body? Do you really appreciate your body now that you are in your 60s? This are the questions posed in a beautiful article written by one of our Sixty and Me bloggers, Elizabeth Dunkel.

In it, she says that her body has “Walked everywhere, run on beaches, hiked on mountains, skied and skated. It has walked cities, strolled through museums and sat in cathedrals and concerts around the world.” Read More

There is something about a random act of kindness that feeds us as much as it feeds the recipient.

Remember the movie, “Pay It Forward?” In it a young boy wonders how it would be if he did something nice for three people and asked those three people to do something nice for three more people? Pretty soon thousands of people were doing nice thing for other people by paying it forward. Read More

Every morning, I have a strange habit. As I am taking a shower, I think about the miracle of modern life. As the water rushes over my body, I remind myself how amazing it is that we have hot water flowing into our homes. I feel grateful for the electricity that lights my home and keeps me warm. As I cook breakfast, I try to remember times when I have been hungry – and the people around the world who still are. Read More

I have a pleasant ritual that I do in the shower every morning that wakes me up emotionally and helps me to feel better about my life. This ritual doesn’t involve a special type of shampoo or happiness soundtrack. It’s a trick that I do in my mind to feel more grateful. Read More

Being grateful is one of the most important ways to express positivity in our lives. This is especially true as we reach our 60s and begin to transition to the next phase of our life. Read More

I am not by nature a jealous person but now and again I look at someone and think, “I wish I was THAT lucky!” Read More