Enjoy This Gratitude Meditation Daily!
This Gratitude Meditation improves attitude and opens your eyes to the beauty of connectedness. In fact, you may never look at the world the same again!
Family and Friends Will Enjoy It, Too!
Practice gratitude throughout the day but the perfect time to create this new habit is when you sit down for a meal. Habits attached to other routine habits are easiest to remember! And I’m sure you rarely, if ever, skip a meal!
Start by Picking ONE Item to Think About
Pick an item of food on your plate or pick something randomly in the room. If you have a group of people, ask the youngest or oldest in the room to select the item.
How did that item arrive? Who was involved in creating it? growing it? packing it? shipping it? Keep thinking broadly to realize that thousands of people could be involved with any one item!
Here’s an Example Using a Cranberry
Hold a cranberry in your hand. Appreciate the beauty of its color, then note its shape and size. What words would you use to describe it? What do you KNOW about this item?
Think even bigger.
Where was this Cranberry Grown?
- Was it a family farm? If yes, was the family part of a national food cooperative? How many people and generations have been devoted to the creation of this perfect cranberry?
- Who made the equipment to flood the fields for harvest? How many were involved with making the pumps that suction the floating cranberries onto the conveyor belt or to drain the bog after the harvest?
- How many were involved in making this conveyor belt? Or the bins that the cranberries are placed in before leaving on trucks? How about those special tires on those big trucks?
Look at the Bag of Cranberries
- How many employees work at the company that made the plastic? Whether it came from crude oil or is synthetically made, there are scientists, researchers, production workers, transportation (drivers), even a sales team, involved in getting the plastic made into a bag.
- How big is the manufacturer of the ink on the bag? There’s another research team, chemists, production workers, salespeople, logistics workers, and truck drivers involved in getting the ink to the factory where the plastic bag is made.
- How many people were involved in making the manufacturing equipment? Get the picture? The equipment probably includes metal, plastics, rubber, electronics, and electricity.
- What about the trucks that transported the equipment? What about the fuel for the trucks and the workers’ cars?
How Did the Cranberry Get into a Bag?
How many people are involved at a “cranberry factory” where those little red sweet-tarts are sorted and bagged?
This little berry made it into a bag, but millions, or billions, are processed into juices, jellies, and craisins (That’s another path for another meditation!).
Who Helped Get the Cranberry Bags to Market?
Sales teams, office workers, truck drivers, freight companies’ employees, and more!
And do all of those people have BENEFITS? There’s another level of involvement!
Who Worked at the Market?
- What number of people work at the market, allowing us the easy convenience of purchasing food close to our homes?
- How many are in the offices? How many stock shelves? What about the cashier who handled your purchase?
One Tiny Cranberry…
So Much to Think About
Share your thoughts in the comment box below…
Can you keep YOUR mind on the things you are thankful for?
Do you think Gratitude Meditation might be a fun activity for you?
Tell us… what items have YOU tried with this gratitude meditation? Did you find an attitude adjustment as well?
And if you want to know more about this little fruit, read this article on cranberries!
This article has been updated since its original publication in November 2019.
ANOTHER GREAT IDEA!
So glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for the tip. I feel grateful every single day. I am grateful for my happiness/contentedness, which I attribute to three things: regular exercise and having a creative outlet and my family.
Thanks for what you do.
I love your 3 things that keep you grateful and happy, Maureen! EXERCISE, CREATIVITY (or exercising imagination), and COMMUNITY (or family)!
Hi, Kathryn!!!!!
Hard to believe a year has gone by… Thank you for this GREAT reminder. Our son and I went to Lake Erie a couple of weeks ago hoping to spot a waterspout. No luck. BUT, being there reminds me that I am small in a magnificent universe, yet I feel so FULL of life and ENERGIZED when I leave. 🙂
Thanksgiving is coming fast! I hope you enjoy your time whatever your plans may be!
Hi Tina, yes! A year already!
I’m with you… looking out on the vastness of water reminds me of God’s magnificence!
and who made the rings on the pistons in the engine of the truck that took them down the road?
who designed the piston rings
who educated the person on how to develope the piston rongs
the same things can be ask about the hundreds of parts in the engine. what about the drive train, transmission, differential, drive shaft?
who made the Highways to drive the trucks on?
where did the water come from that floods the fields? a well? who dug the well?
who designed the pumps and piping?
This could be a huge amount of fun!
Thank you
Hi Terry! You’re on a roll! EXACTLY like that… it goes on and on! We all NEED each other!
Dear Kathryn,
I wish I had read your cranberry article before the weekend. It would have fit perfectly into our time as I am always looking for creative ways to get the grands involved and THINKING!! Gees, it made ME go off into a long process of imagining the story behind one little cranberry! I might have to incorporate something like it into our Christmas time together…
Thank you for always being an inspiration 🙂
Tina