*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.

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