Grateful But Not Satisfied

Photo Credit: lifejingle.com

"Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life."
​-Joel Osteen

We've always operated our life striving for progress and not perfection; counting our blessings along the way. Learning to live a life of gratitude and thankfulness is the art of choosing happiness. Being grateful doesn’t mean we can’t aspire to greater things. It means that you are thankful for everything, both positive and negative that is placed in your life. It is through this philosophy that we believe that we choose to not only be happy, but to also be great.

Failing Forward
Failure isn’t fatal; in fact, it is actually required to succeed, as long as you don’t over-dramatize situations, make poor decisions, or ironically, fail to learn from your failure. John C Maxwell, in his book Failing Forward, states: "Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward. Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new. The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success." It is through failure that we develop gratefulness in all situations and that ultimately translates into forward progress.

Fight Familiarity
We've all heard the saying, 'familiarity breeds contempt.' This can go for people or experiences that are in our life. Familiarity and complacency not only breed contempt, but it can also cause people to become ungrateful. When we get too comfortable, we expect certain things to happen and often lose our thoughtfulness. We stop respecting people and things and we start to find the bad and not the good in life's situations. If we continue to take calculated risks, adventure and explore outside of our comfort zones, we will continue to learn and grow.

Be Elastic
Like a rubber band, we need to adapt and change as our environment adapts and changes. But what is your ability to bounce back? What is your ability to continue to move forward despite a change in your environment, an adversity, a failure, or even a loss of confidence? One of the most difficult challenges in our life is being grateful despite the setbacks that occur. The faster we can turn a negative situation into a productive one, the faster we develop more resiliency. The more that we grow our emotional strength and emotional intelligence the more resilient we become and the faster that we are able to bounce back.

We discussed some ways to maintain gratefulness by learning how to fail forward, learning how to fight familiarity and complacency, and by learning how to be elastic and bounce back quickly. When we talk about not being 'satisfied,' what we are referring to is the desire to constantly learn and grow, and strive for greatness in all areas of life. We can do this by growing our mental flexibility, continuing to transform, seeking proper mentorship and guidance, practicing realistic optimism, and visualizing positive outcomes. Just keep moving forward!

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." -Walt Disney

​In all things, give thanks!
Brandon & Amanda