*Everything* Contributes to Your Advancement

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude. – Emerson

On the heels of yesterday’s post, let me ask:

What are you rejecting?

What do you wish hadn’t happened?

Or, what situation or circumstance do you wish were different?

Because, as Emerson so eloquently describes, everything that happens contributes to your advancement.

***

(What are you resisting, that is persisting?)

***

But wait!

You protest: “Emerson said ‘every good thing that comes to you,’ not everything.”

Actually, read closer (as I needed to initially… ) the first half of the second sentence clears it all up:

“And because all things have contributed to your advancement . . . ” [my emphasis]

Being grateful for everything that has happened doesn’t mean you want “bad” things to happen again, or regularly, only that by rejecting certain parts of your experience, you reject parts of who you are (i.e. the stuff that has helped “make” you).

Be grateful for it all – and learn from it all – but seek to repeat and strengthen the best stuff.

Similar Posts

  • Commitment vs. Mood

    Which one is stronger? Either can overpower the other. This afternoon I didn’t feel like going to the gym. But I hadn’t been since Saturday and my commitment to going three-to-four days per week was in serious jeopardy of being violated. So I went to the gym and worked out. Commitment > Mood.

  • Where Do You Stand?

    If you want light to come into your life, you need to stand where it is shining. – Guy Finley Literally and figuratively. Where do you stand? *  *  * In terms of the literal bit, where are you? Are you doing work you care about? In a place and with people that connect you…

  • Start With You

    Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world. – Etty Hillesum The only thing that will change the world are the…

  • How To Live

    There’s no shortage of pithy sayings about, or formulas for, living in the world today. At the risk of adding to the “noise,” here is my basic formula: just A.S.K.. First, be Authentic. Easier said than done, especially in the Western/Modern world. In a consumer-oriented culture we are barraged with entreaties to consume this, that…