November 2017 | Julie A. Wallace

One drop of rain holds the cosmos.

One drop of rain heralds change.

One drop of rain refracts light into darkness.

One simple action does make a difference. Something as seemingly trivial can be just enough to improve another’s day.

Try authentically acknowledging the cashier at the drive through, at the grocery store, at the convenience store.

Start small.

It doesn’t take any more than a genuine thank you to change the world.

Rain is soothing, blessing the land with nourishment. This video is ten hours long so you definitely don’t need to listen to the whole thing.

But if it’s hot and you’re not near a pool, this may help cool you down.

Start small – five minutes, ten minutes. Close your eyes, relax, and really listen with your entire being.

I picked the image for this month’s mindfulness back in January, and randomly picked a word to go with the month.

The image says peace, yet the word is gratitude.

I thought that maybe I should change the words or the image to better suit November. After all, it’s Thanksgiving here in the US and it seems like everyone is doing a “30 days of Thankful” challenge.

There are posts on all social media channels about how thankful people are about the many things in their lives, and each is accompanied by a cute photo and multiple hashtags.

I’m not so much interested in what you are thankful for, but rather in how you share gratitude throughout your life.

What’s the difference?

I googled to see if anyone else had written about the difference between gratitude and thankfulness and found more than 600,000 responses. I love this explanation from spirit-minded:

“Thankfulness always has to have a receiver and a giver, something or someone who has caused this moment of thankfulness. Gratitude, however implies that we are just in that state of Being; the basic difference is that being thankful is always for something given, while being grateful only requires developing that state of BEING….being grateful for WHAT IS.”

Today, strive to be grateful for what is in your life.

This doesn’t mean sitting on a mountaintop and chanting Sanskrit.

It means thanking everything that comes your way.

I do this often and find it calming, as if offering a blessing.

“Thank you for the Egg McMuffin and for all of the beings involved in the process of getting that breakfast sandwich to me. Thank you for this car that gets me safely from place to place. Thank you for the people and vehicles involved in making sure the road is plowed on a snowy morning.”

Be thankful today.

Be grateful you have this life and whatever is in it today.