I Am So Lucky - The Mantra that Will Change Your life

Though I live in Canada and it is not Thanks Giving here - I try to make every day Thanks giving.  Gratitude is a practice that connects me to deep joy and i find myself stopping in my tracks many times a day to notice a little thing that I feel so lucky for.  I think this practice has made me feel like one of the most lucky people on earth and I want you to feel that way too!

I have had the luxury of being able to feel grateful my whole life!  I am so grateful for that.  I was raised by parents who instilled in me a deep value for helping other people.  My parents involved me in volunteering when I was a little girl and when I was 21 I went to India to work in service projects.  I was overwhelmed to see the happiness and generosity of the people I encountered in one of the small villages where I worked.  I made friends with a 16 year old girl who's job it was to haul water from miles away and walk four hours to the closest place where she could buy rice.  She carried the rice home on her head and then insisted I come in for supper.  She went outside and picked leaves of a tree which she fired and fed me.  I forced her to eat with me and she told me that she would be in trouble if her family knew i was sharing my food with her because the guest is supposed to eat the most.  I later found out that those leaves were all they had to eat and I cried for hours that night because she insisted that I eat them. 

I realized right then how lucky I was to have more than enough food to live on and I thought of the years that I had lived with an eating disorder.  I realized what a luxury it was to have the ability to choose starvation when so many people on this planet starve because they are not fortunate enough to have food.  I was so touched that she could reach out to me and try to help me feel comfortable even though she had a lot of difficulties that she was going through.  I realized that she and I had different ways of dealing with the difficulties that life had presented to us.  She was more focused on sharing her luck and helping others feel comfortable than she was on worrying about the lack of food and money in her house.  She felt lucky to know me and happy for our friendship and blessed to have another young woman to walk to the village with and talk to.  This experience at such a young age really made an impact on the way I thought about things.

I began to really think about the things that I took for granted;  food,, clothes, a really nice house, family and education.  I started to wake up to what a gift it was that I would never be forced to get married when I was 16.  I would never be told that I was not allowed to study.  I had the luxury, as a woman, to be able to run and do yoga and move my body in whatever way i liked without being thought of as promiscuous.  Such simple things that so many people do not have.  My voice and freedom began to feel like a privilege and I began to think about how I could use these gifts to help others.