During a recent conversation with a highly intellectual client, he asked me whether I thought there was a difference between gratitude and APPRECIATION.
In my view it is only a subtle difference, but as with the sacred subtleties in life respecting them adds a richness and respect to our relationships that is priceless.
It seems to me that gratitude is the base from which our APPRECIATION grows and blossoms, that is if we are emotionally available and paying attention. Because we can be grateful for something in our lives without really APPRECIATING it.
The subtle shift from gratitude to APPRECIATION I have found within my own life, and in supporting clients as they build their Emotional Fitness involves being more emotionally present.
It is about being more thoughtfully aware and active in reflecting on the reasons we feel grateful about something or someone.
When we become willing to work on becoming more disciplined in putting down our “weapons of mass distraction” (work, alcohol, drugs, emotional eating or starving, approval of others) and to picking up being more present to the moment, more emotionally aware, we begin to generate feelings of APPRECIATION.
For example, we can be grateful for having a relationship with a lover, spouse or friend. However, we can go further by APPRECIATING their beauty, smile, tone of their voice, warmth in their hugs and their tolerance of our crankiness. We move beyond thankfulness as we consciously recognise the value that our relationship with them adds to our lives.
In fact, one definition of the word “APPRECIATION” is … “recognition of the quality, value, significance, or magnitude of people, places and things.”
When we truly have APPRECIATION we acknowledge the significant uniqueness that someone or something brings into our lives that makes us feel brighter, lighter, happier, more inspired, energised and loved.
And that is a beautiful thing.
Regardless of what else is going on in our external world with other people, work, finances and fears, expressing APPRECIATION can change our day.
As a now past-middle-aged woman, mother and wife I find myself APPRECIATING the ageing process. I never anticipated in my youth that I would just love growing older. I see the salt-and-peppered years that have seasoned my beautiful husband’s heart too, and I’m not just grateful for him, I let him know I APPRECIATE who he is and who he’s not each day.
I subscribe to that belief that …
“Love, like bread, is best made fresh each day.”
Telling my sons and husband every time I am with them that I love them massages both my heart and theirs. Love is a luxury, the biggest gift in our life; let’s consciously choose to APPRECIATE it daily.
APPRECIATION of my recovery, my relationships, my work and my life as a whole swells my heart daily. As a result, my cup runneth over with abundance in all dimensions of my half-century of life.
So I offer the subtle gift of this often bypassed word APPRECIATION to you to ponder. Let’s ensure we become more willing to spend more time APPRECIATING our relationships and most of all, APPRECIATING ourselves.
When we APPRECIATE the relationships we have with those we love, the quality of the relationship that we have with them APPRECIATES in value.
Lotsa love Cynthia xxx
© Copyright 2016 Cynthia J. Morton Emotional Fitness™
This Word Vitamin is an excerpt from my latest bookset “The Four Seasons of the Heart”. If you would like to order your own full set of Daily Word Vitamins one for each day of the year, in book form for yourself or as a gift just click on the SHOP tab and place your order.
