Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the US and it is a day to reflect and celebrate the blessings of life.  One of the problems with Thanksgiving is the tendency to go the opposite direction and start feeling bad because you haven’t reached all the goals you think you should have at this point in your life.  Perhaps the neighbor has a new car or a better house. Perhaps you’ve never traveled the world and seen the pyramids or the Taj Mahal.  Perhaps you have little money socked away for retirement because you’ve got kids in school and you’ve spent your life working for them.  Perhaps it looks like you really haven’t done much in your life.

However, don’t be so fast to lose hope and go through the motions on Thanksgiving without really getting the true joy out of it.  You see, being grateful is really about awareness, taking stock of the things in your life that matter.  The joy in it is gaining an understanding that the things you have in your life are far less important than the people you have in your life.  Think about that.  Look around you.  Who is in your life?  Do you have family, colleagues at work, friends?  Think of the time you’ve spent on this planet, how much of the time that made a difference was with people rather than things?

Tomorrow, or even today, take some time to look around and be aware, aware of all of the human beings who have made your life what it is rather than the things that have only cluttered it and made you worry more.  Maybe it’s time for all of us to declutter and thin out the stuff of life in order to fill it with more of the things that make a difference, namely relationships where we can make a difference or where they can make a difference for us.

Give thanks, be grateful and let the relationships you have make the difference, not the stuff you don’t have.