Reminding ourselves to feel grateful can improve our hapiness and health. Most of us don’t take a conscious effort to catalogue our blessings, I think that a big mistake.
Gratitude is a virtue and an emotion, a knowing awarness that we are the recepients of godness. It is distinctive.and discernible from other postive states. In fact, i would say it is the forgotten factor in happiness.

Grateful people report consistently higher levels of positive emotions, life, satisfaction, vitality and optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. A friend mentioned yesterday that when we practice grateful thinking we can actually reduce our stress levels and take control of our hapiness levels. Overall, the biggest predictor of our happiness is the quality of our relationships and gratitude is a relationship strengthening emotion. Grateful people are less focused on the internal, and more on the interpersonal. They define success less in terms of materialism and more by the quality of their relationships.

Gratitude means recognising the contribution of others.

How to become more grateful ? Well i think we need to keep a gratitude journal, meaning establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits and good things you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal attributes or valued people in your life gives you the potential for a sustainable life theme of gratitude. Going through the motions of gratitude should triggered emotions, the motions inculde smiling, saying thank you and writting letters of gratitude. Writting is good. I love it !

Also I would say to think outside the box, by thinking outside the box you will create opportunities to express your gratitude, you must creatively look for new situations and circumstances in which you feel grateful. For example, if you are a woman, the freedom to have an education, earn your own money and choose who you have a relationship with is something half of the women in the world don’t have and you do. Being grateful humbles us and demands own own sense of self-sufficiency.

Until next time…

Thanks to Wordle.net for allowing me to do this

One of the initiatives of the Mariéme Jamme Foundation is to help abused women get a new and sustainable life, through education, mentoring, and information.

The word abuse is meaningless in countries like Dakar; they don’t understand it and many people really laugh at you when you start talking about it. They think it’s a Joke. 2 in 5 women is abused in Senegal, theses abuses occurred in families alone, it’s done by direct family members. Women keep quiet about it and get on with their lives; it’s a repetitive and multiplied activity..

As a semi- Muslim country, in some villages, you cannot talk about it, sometimes mothers are aware, but ashamed to confront the predator, by saying or making it public, she will be humiliated or her daughter will take the blame for being a bad girl.

Abortion is clandestinely done, with high risk of death. In Kaolack alone, you will find 2 health centres for 700.000 women they usually don’t practice the abortion correctly if requested by a woman and in many circumstances. These actions will lead to a death of a woman or endless pain.

Every time I go to Dakar, I spend time with these women, they tell me their stories, and it is heart broken, I cry a lot, you cannot imagine what I see and hear. I have asked myself many times after my returns what will make them gain back their dignity, what will make them happy, cheerful and be a human, woman again. How can I help them? The fascinating fact is that despite all that, they cope, they sing, dance and pray a certain God that no one touched them again.

My foundation will not heal these women pain, I understand this but it will certainly help them have a better life, minimum it can be.

Bill Liao and Philip de Lisle are talking at the Neo Consciousness event; please join us on the 26th of Feb 2009. Both men are transforming people lives.

All the proceeds of the event will go to the Hunger Project, The Mariéme Jamme foundation and many more charities that are making real changes.

Come along and make your mark!