What Are You Grateful For?

As I awoke the other morning I could feel pain shoot down my right arm and into my hand. It wasn’t excruciating, but it was fairly unpleasant. I sighed because I know exactly what the problem is and it’s a regular morning experience.

Six years ago I had surgery to remove two of the discs in my upper spine. The neurosurgeon that did the operation told me I had 2 others that were bulging and may need surgery in the future. Bummer huh?

As I lay there in bed I realized I had to get up and not doze back to sleep because I had a phlebotomy appointment in an hour. I have a condition (hemochromatosis) that means my body produces too much iron and as such I have to have a pint of blood removed out once per month.

As I stood in the shower I started to lament my medical issues and curse my misfortune. As well as the disc and spine problems I also noted I regularly get low backache, my knees ache on an almost daily basis due to a running too much when I had a misalignment in my hips, and I need a root canal!

It didn’t end there either because my eyes need retesting because my current glasses are no longer cutting the mustard, I have a benign liver tumor that needs to be watched and a hiatal hernia that is just kinda sitting there doing very little to earns it’s keep.

I managed to keep up this train of thought for about 20 minutes until something broke my state.

I was getting ready to leave and packing my gym kit to take with me. As I drive close by the gym it seemed silly to come home and then go out again later, why not stop on my way back?

Then it hit me.

I was whining (albeit it so myself), about all the stuff that was wrong with me and at the same time packing my gym kit! There is a certain element of irony there I think it’s fair to say.

I had conveniently forgotten that most people who have hemochromatosis find out about the same time they’re told they have either pancreatic of liver cancer. It is almost always asymptomatic and I got VERY lucky with a routine blood test.

I’d also forgotten that whereas my knees aren’t as good as they once were I can still do an hour of strenuous exercise without hobbling home. It had also slipped my mind that whereas I can’t read the dial on my iPod without my glasses anymore, I have got an iPod and I have got vision. Millions of people either could never afford an IPod or have no sight.

Rich and Happy people don’t spend too long dwelling on what is wrong in their life. They   put right what they can put right and then shift their focus onto the positive for the other stuff.

One of the things being a Life Coach has taught me is that nobody has a perfect life. We all get sick, lose loved ones, have issues to deal with we’d rather not and we all eventually shuffle off this mortal coil.

The difference between Rich and Happy people and poor and miserable people isn’t the  issues themselves, it’s the way they deal with the issues.

Think of people like Michael J Fox, Christopher Reeve and Randy Pausch and how they dealt with incredible misfortune.

They didn’t retain their dignity and spirit by fixating on what was wrong with their life. They did it by realizing it is what it is, and asking questions like, ”How can I maximize this to the best extent possible, not just for me, but for millions of others too?

As we approach Thanksgiving there’s lot of talk about gratitude and thanks and rightly so. When you’re feeling grateful it’s impossible to harbor negative thoughts, the two are mutually exclusive.

Optimistic thinking has been proven without doubt to enhance health, improve your mood and lengthen life expectancy and there are few better ways to get into a state of optimism than giving thanks and being grateful for the good stuff in your life.

As a Brit immersed in the tradition of Thanksgiving and grateful to be as such, I’d just like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving, from both myself and John.