“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of… We don’t have enough exercise.  We don’t have enough work.  We don’t have enough profits.  We don’t have enough power.  We don’t have enough wilderness.  We don’t have enough weekends.  Of course, we don’t have enough money—ever.  We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough—ever.  Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.  And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day.  We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justification for an unfulfilled life.”

Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

Beyond the Quote (92/365)

How do we combat chronic feelings of lack?  By deploying chronic gratitude.  It’s no secret that gratitude is a cornerstone piece of a fulfilled life.  Gratitude is, in fact, what fills a person’s life.  When we are grateful for our family, our family fills our lives; when we are grateful for our friends, our friends fill our lives; when we are thankful for food, water, shelter, clothes, health, etc., then those things fill our lives, too.  Gratitude fills us up and the more gratitude we can deploy, the more fulfilled we will feel.