Janet McNeill

<March 3‘09>

I’ve been writing about change for 20 years now; how we need to “change the world” – change the way we do things. After several years of writing and (environmental) activism aimed at changing the world, I had that “Aha!” realization that Buddhists have long spoken of.

If we want peace in the world, we must first find peace within.

This is harder than it sounds, of course. Things always are, hmm?

Well. Life has conspired to keep teaching me useful lessons. Parenthood, marriage and Relationships 101 just keep the lessons coming. It never ends.

The biggest and best one in my life has been about the powerful magic of gratitude. I’ve written about this elsewhere, and it keeps coming up over and over in what I write; sorry to be such a broken record about this, but it’s such a key lesson, I seem to need to keep on and on about it.

Gratitude is magic. When we really practice it in a focused way, it makes us feel different from the in-side out. Another big lesson I’ve learned along the way is that what we focus on expands.

I think a lot of us focus on fear-based feelings an awful lot of the time. We obsess about what we don’t have, have lost, wish we had, can’t have. On jealousy and resentment and victimhood.

“Oh poor me.”

Since what we focus on expands, that stuff fills us right up. It recycles itself endlessly, too, hmm?

Me, I prefer to fill up on the love-based side of the life equation. Gratitude – joy – energy – passion.

And, since what we focus on expands, I tend to be a pretty joyful person a lot of the time.

Now, it so happens I’m in a bit of a personal…shall we say, challenging…patch right now. Some of the tough stuff – loss, loneliness, pain – is very much present at the moment.

So it’s more work than usual, staying joyful and positive.

Gratitude isn’t the only “everyday magic” I call on – I also use daily walking – frequent singing – hanging out with friends – and meaningful work – to keep my spirits up.

For sure, though, gratitude is the one that transformed my life, back 12 or so years ago now.

I think there are quite a few things that can help us transform ourselves (and then, hopefully, the world!). Given the current state of the world, I’d say there is a pretty clear need for transformations of many kinds, wouldn’t you? Counselling and books and various sorts of workshops and experiences can be enormously helpful for individual-level transformation – and I’ve made use of many of those too, over the years.(1)

But I’m utterly convinced that gratitude is the very best place for any of us to start.

Janet

P.S. I’ve done quite a few postings about gratitude. They’re all listed on the one called ‘Gratitude Postings: A list & an insight.’ You can link to all of them from that page.