I know you all expect a fitness tip today, but I needed to switch gears a bit and write about something very important to me. Gratitude

Don’t worry, I’m not about to get all ethereal on you. I just thought it was important to discuss this, as we are all going through a tough economic time right now and even more, today is a day for rejoicing.

It’s SO easy to get caught up in all of the things that we don’t have enough of. Things like money, time, peace of mind, etc. When we get down to really thinking about these things, we may realize that something like money, although important, is not nearly as important as time or our peace of mind. Looking even further, we may realize that time is not as important as peace of mind. When you look at peace of mind, you may then realize that this is something that we each have the choice to create for ourselves.

If you aren’t experiencing peace of mind, chances are you’re stressing over something way too much. Things like lack of money or time. It’s not an easy feat, but we can certainly counter stress by taking a moment to consciously relax our minds.

One of the greatest ways to do this is by thinking about all of the wonderful things that you are already experiencing in your life – Things that you should already be grateful for. Think about the so-called “small things” like love, friends, family, laughter & oxygen. These are powerful things that can turn any mood into a better one.

Listen, we all have stressors in our life from time to time. This so is life. Our lives are rarely EVER made up of one amazing day followed by another and another, etc. We are bound to have a hick-up here and there, but this is not a bad thing!

If you only knew happiness and nothing else, you wouldn’t really appreciate being happy, trust me! You would have nothing to compare it to really know if you were happy or not. When you have a bad moment, a bad day or even a bad week, it’s only a matter of time when you will find yourself laughing again. This moment will/should strongly remind you how valuable those bad moments were – They remind us of just how important happiness is. Otherwise you couldn’t know what true happiness really was.

We can however turn most days into happy ones, by working at it. That’s right! We can look for the positive things in everything we experience. When we do this, we change our mind-set. We create for ourselves, a positive mood and guess what? The more positive we expect, the more positive we will receive! This isn’t magic, its common sense.

Please take a moment today and remind yourself of all of the AWESOME things that you already have. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, good or bad. One thing’s for sure, you have the power to insure that you can make the most out of tomorrow by being grateful for what you have and by recognizing the positive out of everything you experience.

God Bless!

James Villepigue