Living a life of gratitude will open up doors for you, which will allow good things and the right people to flow into your life.  Happy Thanksgiving, but while you are all wrapped up in greeting family, cooking turkey, and Black Friday shopping, please don’t forget the reason for this wonderful holiday—gratitude. Be grateful that you are able to greet family, cook turkey, and start your Christmas shopping; and if you are going through difficulties, as hard as it sounds right now, be grateful for them as well. As hard as it is to believe, one day you will look back and see that everything, good and bad, will ultimately all be for the greater good, so be grateful for everything that comes your way.

Be grateful for the good things. Be grateful that you are alive. Be grateful for every breath. Be grateful that you have food to eat and shelter to protect you. If you have special people in your life, be grateful to have them.

The tougher thing to do is to be grateful for the difficulties you experience and the down seasons of life. There is a time for everything, and if you stay in faith, at some point in life you will realize that it all comes together as God wills it and for your greater good.

In Thorns, Making Room for God I discuss the feelings that exist in the category of love. These are the feelings that were pre-installed in your soul by God, and the feelings you were born to feel. Among these feelings is gratitude, so on this day of thanks I would like to share with you a brief excerpt from Thorns on the topic, as well as two of my theories: The Positive Feelings and Behaviors Cycle, and The Positive Behavior Ripple Effect. You will see how your gratitude can have a positive effect on the whole world around you, thus making your world a little brighter, you purpose a little clearer, and your potential a little closer to being realized. I hope you enjoy these excerpts, and I wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.

Gratitude

Gratitude is the feeling you get when you’re thankful. Living a life of gratitude will open up all kinds of doors for you, and that all starts with feeling gratitude.

Gratitude can get buried in feelings of lack, but feelings of lack don’t exist in the category of love. God knows no lack. He is abundance. He is eternal, everywhere, all seeing, and all knowing. He is life itself. Don’t allow feelings of lack for what you feel you need and/or don’t have to bury your feelings of gratitude for all that you do have. Remember the old adage, “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Being grateful every moment to be alive and connected to the Lord will dissolve feelings of lack.

Once feelings of lack are gone and gratitude grows back in its place, don’t be surprised if you see the things and people you need turning up in your life exactly when you need them. You get all of this from simply feeling gratitude. It also feels good when someone shows gratitude for something that you did for them; however, you should never do things simply to receive someone’s gratitude. That’s an ego-based approach that can take the joy you feel for having done something good for someone and turn it into disappointment that someone didn’t say, “Thank you.”

The Positive Feelings and Behaviors Cycle

The best part is that not only do positive feelings lead to positive behaviors, but the resulting behaviors loop back around, where they tend to reinforce and strengthen the feelings that led to the positive behaviors in the first place. These stronger, reinforced feelings lead to more of the same, maybe even more intensely positive behavior, and the loop just keeps going. Since the feelings in the category of love come pre-installed in you, they’re the start of this loop of positive divine energy. Behaving in a loving manner makes you feel more love. Behaving in a gentle manner makes you feel more peaceful. Relaxing makes you feel more content.

As I mentioned earlier, you can’t throw love at someone without getting it all over your hands, so to speak. Thus, when you tell the people you love just how much you care about and appreciate them, their reactions will bring even more feelings of love right back to you. “May the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love for one another, and for all people, just as we also do for you” (1 Thessalonians 3:12).

The Positive Behavior Ripple Effect

In addition to looping back and reinforcing your feelings in the category of love, positive behaviors have a ripple effect on the whole world around you. This is true for even the tiniest positive behavior. For instance, my wife and I were out walking one night and entered a long crosswalk to cross the street at the same time a gentleman in a minivan was approaching the intersection from the other side. He waited patiently as my wife and I tried to speed up our walk across the street. When we reached the other side, I gave him a wave and thumbs-up to show my gratitude. I then pointed out to my wife what a wonderful effect something as simple as that could have on lots of people.

In this case, the gentleman waved back and returned my thumbs-up with a smile. As a result of this exchange, maybe he walked into his home with a bounce in his step, having picked a flower for his wife as he walked up to the front door, and aware of her affection when she offered him a hello kiss. In doing so, he may have unknowingly comforted her after a long, hard day, which in turn led to her going back into the kids’ room to give them an extra good-night hug. Maybe she read them the story she had been too tired to read them moments earlier, and promised them a treat in their lunches the next day. As a result, the kids might have had a great day walking around in pure joy, cheering up the kid who was alone on the playground, the teacher who was distracted by a marital problem, the principal who was feeling pressure from her superiors, and so on, and so on.

This ripple can also work in the negative. Think about what might have happened if my wife and I had given that driver a look as if to say, Why are you pressuring us? Back off, man! As a result of us rejecting his courtesy, he never would have thought to pick that flower and would have been too preoccupied to notice his wife’s offer of a hello kiss. As a result, her dejection from her long hard day would have been reinforced, so she never would have gone back into the kids’ room. The extra hug, the bedtime story, and the treat would never have happened. Instead the kids would have gone to school sad because they felt a sad vibe from their mom the night before. They would even have had to go to bed without a bedtime story. As a result, they wouldn’t have been there to comfort the lonely student, the teacher, the principal, and so on, and so on.

All of this, the entire ripple, starts with feelings. In this case it started with my wife and me having and expressing feelings of gratitude that this gentleman patiently waited for us to cross the street. Our expression of gratitude and the resulting feelings were his reward for the behavior he showed—in this case, courtesy. That courtesy had to be spurred on by some feelings in the category of love. Maybe it was spurred on by a feeling of empathy because the gentleman also walks with his wife.

There’s no way for me to know for sure exactly what this gentleman was feeling, but if he wasn’t feeling feelings in the category of love, he probably would have zoomed right in front of us. Thus, this gentleman was caught in a Positive Feelings and Behaviors Cycle, as were my wife and I at the time. As a result, the world around all three of us became a better place, a lighter place, and it all started with positive feelings. Positive feelings lead to positive behaviors, which then ripple through all that surrounds you.