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My Journey to A Great Thanksgiving Week End


It is always fun to enjoy a long week-end. For some people it is an opportunity to do things that they did not have time to do, or visit friends and family members that they had not seen for a while.

 That is what happened to us this last Saturday. A friend of mine had extended an invitation to us a few weeks ago to go to see him and his family and stay overnight. We did not know that he had done the same with some other families as well. It was a great surprise when we got there. After a while, other guests started to come, before we knew, the house was packed. It was so great

I don't know where the tradition came from, but I think that whoever thought about having a Thanksgiving day was right. In my opinion it should be a daily thing to be thankful. However, most of the times, it is easier said than done. Facing daily challenges can take away the focus on the blessings. I heard someone saying that energy flows where attention goes. Whatever we give energy to, grows. If we focus on the blessings, they will keep coming to us. The same thing can happen when we focus on the challenges.

One day, I attended a seminar and the presenter gave us a great exercise. He asked for someone to volunteer for the exercise. He asked him to name everything in the room that had the colour blue. He started by his blue shirt, five minutes later he was still pointing at blue stuff.

Then the seminar leader asked him this: “when you were naming all these blue objects, did you see anything that was brown?”. We were all surprised by his question. Of course not. We were looking for blue objects. While there were plenty of brown stuff, we did not pay attention to them because we were looking for something different. Then the seminar leader looked at all of us and said: “Now, let's say the blue colour represents the challenges, while brown is for blessings. Don't you see that if you focus on the one, you miss the other?” All this time, our friend was focusing on the blue (the challenges), while brown objects (the blessings) where all around us.

 I learned my lesson. Energy flows where attention goes. We all go through difficult times. It's part of life. However, there are also blessings all around us, but we do not seem to notice them. Let's all count our blessings. There are so many.

Moral of the story? Do you want to count your blessings? Just invite me and my family and we will stay overnight.

Always a pleasure

 Patrick

The Journeyman

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