Gifts and Gratitude

My horoscope for today reads: Everything, even the air you breathe, is a gift. This is all very much in keeping with what I have been reading and studying and preparing to go ahead with, and it makes me think that the Universe is in tune with me, or rather, vice versa, and is telling me to go ahead and do what I want to do.  I have been studying the method of Appreciative Inquiry in business coaching, and Appreciative Living to use in my coaching practice with individuals.  I have learned why in our practice, we say "Words create worlds", because our lives and how we see them is created around the stories we tell about it.
If you have two people who have seen the same accident, and one is horrified by it and its surroundings and its outcomes and aftermath, and one who sees it and is heartened by all the people who rushed in to help, and to bring comfort to the victim's family, do you have two people who saw different occurrances, or do you have two people who saw the occurrance through different lenses? What we focus on becomes our reality, and while there might be both a positive and negative to every situation, it is what we choose to focus on that sets the stage for us. "We do not see things as they are, but as we are" to quote Anais Nin. One of the things I am learning is that our reality is created as we speak of it, so if we focus on what was good, if we keep in mind what we want more of in our lives, and when we concentrate on our strengths and how we contributed to making the situation more of what we want, we are already looking through more positive lenses.
When I am angry, or sad, or disillusioned, or, I am learning to think "what is the good in this situation?" It is a very gradual process, and I don't yet always find what is good, yet.  But since I am already immediately looking for the good, I am sure to begin to learn to find it.
Starting with my horoscope today was not accidental.  It reminded me that I have resolved to keep a small gratitude notebook.  I refrain from calling it a journal, because it connotes more of a commitment than I am willing to commit to. On a page, marked from Monday through Sunday, I have committed three spaces for things from each day that I am grateful.  I take from 3-5 minutes, and I have committed to doing it at the same time each day in order to make it a habit. So for today, being reminded that the air that I breathe is a gift, I am grateful for that. The other two things that I am grateful for today is the pleasant lunch that I shared with my husband and daughters in a favorite old haunt that we haven't been to in a long time.  Having grown daughters, it is not always possible to meet together as a family for a meal. And the third is that while we have been worried about health concerns of loved ones, some things are looking up.
So, I am asking my readers to start a gratitude notebook, committing only 3-5 minutes to some things you have to be grateful for, and putting a more positive turn on your outlook.  Remember, it is a slow process to view life appreciatively, because we are natural problem solvers, but we get more of what we concentrate on, so concentrate on what you are grateful for and see what happens.