Giving Thanks

Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a story with you about something that

happened a few years ago. I rolled out of bed one morning, after not being able to sleep at all the night before because the neighbors were arguing and slamming doors, I couldn't get comfortable in any position, and thunder kept waking me up. I remember getting out of bed cranky and frustrated, and my day was just beginning. To add insult to injury, two months prior to this, my friend suggested that I try meditating

every morning. And to tell you the truth, I absolutely hated it. I mean, for years I've had the same routine of coffee, news, breakfast, and going online. But now, before doing anything else, I had to sit for a few minutes and focus on my breath? Most times, I just ended up thinking about all the other things I'd rather be doing, or simply wishing I was still in bed. As you can imagine, sitting down to meditate was extremely difficult

after a sleepless night, but a promise is a promise. I got out of bed, I went to the little corner that I had set up for meditation, and I sat with my bitter thoughts about everything that kept me up all night. Within two minutes, something interesting happened: none of my complaints would "stick." Instead of being upset about the storm outside,

I actually felt blessed to be indoors. The neighbors arguing only made me feel more grateful for the healthy relationship I was in, and there was no way I could complain about being uncomfortable in my bed, while so many people sleep on cardboard boxes on the street every night. It was amazing how gratitude managed to stop every negative feeling I had. My morning meditation turned out to be better than a cup of coffee,

and I was positively enthusiastic about the day ahead. In fact, when I ran into my neighbors on the way out that day, I felt sorry and sad instead of angry. Because I knew they actually had a much rougher night than I did. Gratitude is an amazing antidote to almost any negative feeling we could have. Cognitively speaking, actually, we can't feel anger and gratitude at the same time. That's because the minute we are angry with someone is the instance we have momentarily forgotten how grateful

we are to have them in our lives in the first place. And as soon as we turn back to gratitude, the anger disappears. It's pretty amazing, actually! If you wake up each morning thinking you didn't get enough sleep the night before, or that perhaps you're not pretty enough, rich enough, successful enough, healthy enough, or anything else enough, it means you begin each day with the mindset of scarcity, and you experience every moment from a place of lack. But we are creatures of habit,

so we can create a new habit to replace that bad one. Many of us live in scarcity of not enough simply because we haven't yet taken the time to define what enough looks like. And if we don't know what enough is, we will never have it. That is why gratitude is so