Finding Light in the Storm: Embracing Gratitude for Spiritual Strength and Happiness - Episode 6

Have you ever wondered how gratitude can transform your life, even in the midst of chaos? Join me as I delve into why gratitude is so important to finding happiness and spirituality in your life. We'll explore how this powerful emotion can shift perspectives, bringing light to even the darkest of times. Through my own experiences, you'll see how focusing on the blessings in our lives can foster happiness and resilience, no matter the challenges we face.

Together, I'll suggest practical ways to cultivate daily gratitude, enhancing your spiritual well-being and overall contentment. I'll share simple yet profound practices, like keeping a gratitude journal, that can help you recognize the abundance of blessings surrounding you. By making gratitude a daily habit, you can strengthen your spiritual life, leading to greater spiritual strength and happiness. Tune in for heartfelt reflections and actionable tips that can transform your approach to life's ups and downs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding Happiness Through Gratitude
• 9:32 Strengthening Spiritual Life Through Gratitude

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You know, I had this whole idea about what to do for today's episode and I totally forgot about it. So right now I've decided to kind of just free flow my thoughts because with the hurricane the last couple days that passed through here, it's been a very interesting time. So I'm just going to free flow and let things happen, proceed where they will. This is your Spirit by Design, with Todd Andrews, and where I help you design the spiritual life that you want to have, especially when, like me, quite often being low man on the totem pole, you can't make it to church on Sunday. So how do you maintain your spirituality, keep it strong in spite of not being able to get to church as often as you'd wish? So that's kind of. I started out talking about the hurricane. So the last couple of days we had a massive hurricane that blew through. A massive hurricane that blew through and we here where we live, we're pretty much spared everything. We got somewhat light winds there. There was some some floodwaters that made it up into our road, but they were gone by the time we we woke up this morning. They they weren't even our road, but they were gone by the time we woke up this morning they weren't even. We didn't even know that they had hit, other than a friend of ours took a picture at 3 am and it was just like a couple inches of water in the road. So we were spared. In fact we didn't even lose power. So to all those that lost power, lost their house, I know somebody that their entire house was flooded and gone. I know some other people whose businesses were just damaged beyond belief. But what I've seen, especially from those that I know that are very spiritually based, that I know that are very spiritually based, there's just been an outpouring of love for the Savior and for the gospel and for the benefits of living. People lost and had damage to their house and to their business, damage to their house and to their business, and yet their focus was on the gratitude for the people that came to help them out.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Gratitude it's such an important thing because your life can be great, your life can be terrible. It doesn't matter what is going on in your life. If you don't have gratitude, you will never be able to find happiness. No matter how much money you make, no matter how little money you make, but no matter what is going on in your life, without gratitude, you will be unable to find happiness. What is it about gratitude that boosts your spirit and boosts that happiness quotient in your life? Well, and boosts that happiness quotient in your life, well. Gratitude is more than just being thankful. Gratitude is like the deep God-given thanks. It's a gift that you receive from God for being thankful. Now you want to have a good life, you want to have a happy, spiritual life. You want to learn to see the blessings that the Lord has put in your path.

Speaker 1: 4:16

Take a moment and be grateful every day. You know, I used to do a gratitude practice, which was amazing, um, where every morning, I would write down the things that I was grateful for, and Tiffany did it also, and it was just awesome, the. You suddenly started noticing every day, all the time, things that, noticing every day all the time, things that that just made you happy and were that made us grateful to be alive, grateful for the work that we had, where we were living, what we were doing for our friends and family. When you start to notice and be grateful for things, you tend to see even more. So right now, it's a crazy time that we're living in, right, politics is chaos, people are divided and what I see is a lot of people are just unhappy. They're unhappy with themselves, they're unhappy with who they are, what they're doing, where they're at in life, just unhappy for so many reasons. It seems like everyone's looking for a reason to be a victim, everyone's looking for a reason to be unhappy, blame others, etc. Etc. But you can get yourself out of that rut with the use of gratitude.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Did you know that gratitude is the number one best method for getting yourself out of a rut? Because you can't be unhappy, sad, frustrated, angry and grateful at the same time. So if you start feeling yourself looking at the world as a dark and angry place and you know I do love quoting the Rocky quote place and you know I do love quoting the Rocky quote um, about the world being a dark and ugly place, and it is and it can be, and it will beat you down until you get up and punch back right. But how do you punch back against that beatdown? You punch back through gratitude. You punch back by being grateful for the life you have, the breath that you take every day, the family that you have around you. If you don't have family around you, take a moment and be grateful for having a house If you don't have a house, for a car. If you don't have a car, a tent be grateful for what it is that you have around you.

Speaker 1: 7:09

There's always a reason to be grateful, even if you have nothing. Some of the most humble people with the least amount of things are some of the happiest because they've learned to be grateful and to express that gratitude, because gratitude builds upon itself. It's pretty cool, it really does. It builds upon itself. So we were very grateful as the storm passed and I was in the middle of cooking dinner and the lights flickered and we have an electric stove, so that wasn't cool, but they came right back on. I was truly grateful that I was able to finish dinner and our lights never went out. We still had power. Tens of thousands of people do not have power. Some people's homes are destroyed, but we were grateful that the Lord watched over us and that we still were able to have power. We've got our three-year-old granddaughter visiting us, so we really did not want to have her go through a traumatic experience while visiting her grandparents.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So there is another question that some people are going to be asking, and it's all on how you look at life is well, why do some bad things happen to some people and good things happen, Like I'm being grateful that we did not lose power? And the truth is that God only knows. There's a reason for everything that happens in life and we have to let go and let God. Have you heard that saying before. Let go and let God, meaning there are things that we can't explain, can't control, and we don't need to try and control everything, but we can be grateful for those things that we have, grateful when things go right, grateful when things go wrong. Let go and let God. I love that saying.

Speaker 1: 9:32

So it's going to be a short one today because with the storm, I ended up only recording it just now. So this is a off the cuff from from just my thoughts that I wanted to share with you today. You want to build and strengthen your spiritual life. And strengthen your spiritual life, be grateful. Take a moment every day and be grateful for something If you can write it down in a gratitude journal and that will help you out immensely to see all the things that you do have to be grateful for in life. This is, todd helping you to build the spiritual life that you desire Signing off. Have a blessed day, thank you.