It’s not happy moments that make us grateful,

but gratefulness that makes happy moments.

A search for “grateful” in my blog posts reveals that word appears 53 times, and that doesn’t include the word “gratitude,” which appears 118 times. So, here’s my GRATEFUL recap……

My goal for this project [of posting a daily Happy Day Moment of Facebook] was to make myself focus on some “moment” during each day where I could be positive, thankful, and “happy” that I was alive. To slow down. Just for a bit. And be grateful.

I’ve learned what being grateful can do, embracing each day. Life can be hard. I know.  But every day that I choose to look for the happy, the good, the blessing, the love, the joy – shifts my heart and my head into a better place. A place of gratitude.

Look for those moments. Listen for them. Wait for them. Be grateful for them.

What started as a simple essay I was asked to write morphed into a Facebook project and is now a website. The idea of choosing to be grateful, to find a “moment” even in the worst day, that was happy, that was thankful.

Because there is always a moment, no matter how small, no matter how dark the day, that is worthy of being grateful.

Because when you’re grateful, you increase your happiness by 25%!

You’ll be surprised how much easier it is to be grateful when you make a daily effort to think about good and not bad; praises and not pain; kindness and not meanness; acceptance and not rejection.

A grateful mindset can help you navigate life’s turbulence.

Grateful people are happy.

Taking in the good and being grateful is not about always putting a happy shiny face on everything, nor is it about turning away from the hard things in life. It’s about nourishing gratitude, your inner well-being, contentment, and peace—refuges to which you can always return.

So I’m all about thankfulness and gratefulness and saluting the goodness of each day.

We can choose to be thankful and grateful, understanding the fragility of life that makes every moment so meaningful. We often waste too many moments immersing ourselves in needless distractions that steal our attention away from the things that actually matter. We should grasp the precious moments of this life and stop being distracted with the things that don’t really matter.

Grateful eyes can see grace and goodness, even in complicated and thorny packages.

Catalog the kindnesses of each day. Look at what you have. You have much to be grateful for.

As I’m intentionally learning that “Living with Gratitude” changes everything, changes the way I think.

Changes the way I see things. Changes me. It’s not that I’ve never been grateful before.  But I seemed to focus my thanks when it was easy. Now I’m learning to give thanks, to live EVERY day with a sense of gratitude. Even when my heart has those hard white cold days.

David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, wrote, “The root of joy is gratefulness … It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.” And the Bible tells us to be grateful “in all circumstances.”

Be joyful. Be grateful. Always.

That’s one reason why I post “Happy Day Moments” daily on my Facebook page (and on my personal Facebook page) – to live intentionally with a grateful heart, to plant words and messages of love, hope, confidence, faith and encouragement.

Every day that you wake up healthy, be grateful.

Living with gratitude, discovering a Happy Moment takes practice, believe me. But you can learn to be happy (even for a bit a fleck a jiffy of a time) each day by simply being grateful.

We all get to decide how happy we want to be. Because everyone gets to decide how grateful they are willing to be.

One of the lessons I learned in any hard sad dark season is that it’s important to stop and breathe deeply and look around me and choose to embrace a beautiful life, a grateful life, a happy life, whatever that might look like in any season of my life.

Look out the window. Just look for 30 seconds. Look and really see. Then pause and be grateful for the looking.

Right now is the best time for loving and for being grateful.

There is always, under the mess of life, something to be grateful for.

It’s easy to be cynical; it’s brave to be grateful.

Being grateful is the shortest and surest way to being happy.

Spend intentional time being grateful and you will ground yourself in God’s love.

My first real step towards becoming a “happyologist” came as a teenager when I dove into that swimming pool on that summer day and broke my neck and became a quadriplegic. There was a choice before me: become bitter or become better. {Read more of the story here.} Will I focus on what I lost? Or will I focus on what I can gain? Focus on who I was? Or who I can become? Could I still be grateful, even in the midst of this life-altering circumstance?

I decided to live with gratefulness. I chose happy.

We decide what to look for and what we see. We decide our focus.  It’s about learning, studying the ways of contentment and appreciation.  As a happyologist, I know that by slowing down, by looking differently, I choose to focus on the light, the positive, and all the reasons I have to be eternally grateful.

Start to see the good, the happy, even in the small.  Actively search for those moments, develop a posture of looking for and of finding happy. Cultivate this vision: seeing those moments, and being grateful for the happy day moments.

Be patience when you have little; be grateful when you have more than enough.

I want to understand that every day love makes a difference. That life is a gift. That love is a gift. That each day I awake and breathe is a gift.

It’s the only gift that I have right now. And my only appropriate response is gratefulness.

When we view our situation through the lens of gratefulness, instead of a self-centered mind-set, we have the potential to be happy in spite of circumstances.

You’ll have a hard time ever being happy if you aren’t grateful for what you already have.

Focusing on finding a “happy/grateful” moment in each day has made me powerful and positive and able to conquer disappointment and pain and innumerable hard places.

Some days we wake up with body aches and heart aches and life is bleak and the truth is we’re tired and we know we just may carry sadness all day long. And then. We shift our focus, we look above, we refocus and we become grateful for love and for a God who can take our aches and replace them with joy, who can be light in darkness, a compass for direction ….even in the midst of storms and difficult places.

That season of minimal color, stark branches, when the world feels forsaken, will become a season of blossoms.

And I will be grateful.

For every season holds something of value. The buried seed blooms.

Essential to living a life with joy, confidence, faith, and hope is remembering to be grateful.

By understanding that every moment of every day in every life does not have to be happy.

Only ONE moment does. ONE glimpse. ONE second. ONE breath.

And choosing to find it. Choosing to hold onto it. Choosing to claim it to redeem any hard messy heartbreaking sorrowful day. It’s our choice. Being grateful. For life.