Gratitude Is The Mother Of All Virtues

Hey, Cadre crew, how you doing today? Nick Hanson here. I hope that you're having a good day. It is thanksgiving today. Happy thanksgiving. It's got me thinking about gratitude. Naturally, GK Chesterton called gratitude the mother of all virtues. And I think there's some truth to that. Because if I can get the gratitude going, if I can get the gratitude flowing, then, you know, good things can start happening. So some things I can do to get that going is write a gratitude list in the morning or any time during the day, maybe text it to some friends.

I'm grateful for sunshine. I'm grateful for coffee. I'm grateful for family. I'm grateful for friends. I'm grateful for just breath. Grateful to be alive. Grateful for the ability to think, to write, to dream, to act, to do, to live, to be, to see, to hear. And other thing I've been thinking about is receiving. So often we ask, we ask, if we ask, I need this, I need that. If only this would happen, if only this woman would be my girlfriend, or if only this job made me this amount of money, or if I lived here, or if I did this, or if I was acclaimed for that power, prestige.

These are things that are ingrained in us from a young age. Accomplishments, recognition. And there's nothing wrong with those things. They just, if those become the higher power, then life takes on a tough, a tougher way, you know? And if we're really demanding, then the universe is going to be really demanding from us. There's some kind of energy shift, you know, going on. And so I think it can be important to practice receiving, and we're not very good at receiving gifts necessarily, or praise, you know, it can be tough to receive.

And so I think it's a skill to open up and just accept gifts as they, as they come, you know, to us, every good and perfect gift is from the heavenly father of light above, you know, everything that comes into our life. And it seems to me that the best things, the best friends, the best relationships, the best opportunities do, in a way, seem to fall out of the sky or walk around the corner or just show up in my life without any effort on my part. And what a beautiful, beautiful thing that is. And what a beautiful thing that synchronicities are.

And if you start paying attention to the synchronicities, oh, God, it's beautiful. It's one of my favorite things, you know? And Ann Lamott, this author I really like, talks about bird by bird. We go, and it's so easy to get so far, you know, in front and of ourselves and. But if we just think one thing at a time, bird by bird, just kind of keep going, you know? And I heard someone else say, this is a scientific study. This could be, you know, don't take this with a grain of salt, but that the thought of a bird chirping or like flying from a tree or visualizing a bird actually hits the same neurons that thinking of money hits in our minds.

I don't know if that's true or not, but I was trying that last week. Whenever I started thinking about money or worried about money, I started picturing a bird flying. That's what Napoleon Hill, I think would call transmutation. Right? But anyways, I'm getting off the topic. You know, let's just practice this week being grateful, giving gifts, receiving gifts and just keeping that heart open. I hope you're having a good day. I'll talk to you later. Bye.