The magic of gratitude
Just last week Alphabet (Google) publicly announced that 12,000 employees will be let go worldwide. While it wasn't a surprise, for many like me, it still was a shock. It has been a week of reflections. This is all everyone talked about at work this last week. I had recently been feeling a little restless at work and while there was a part of me that knew this was because I was taking what I had for granted, it still didn't sink in, until this week. Dalai Lama XIV once said:
“We need to learn to want what we have, not to have what we want, in order to get stable and steady happiness.”
This is counterintuitive to how we are trained to live our lives. Everything we learned at school and what our parents have taught us in life is to strive and work hard in order to achieve what you want. A cynic will hear this and ask, does this mean we should stop striving to have more, do more and be better? I don't think this is what the Dalai Lama is trying to say. In the pursuit of growth and development, we have forgotten to be grateful for what we do have and what we have achieved. The reality in life is that we will never be able to completely fulfil all our human wants and desires, so if we only ever look to happiness in achieving those wants and desires, we will never be truly happy.
When I look back on my life so far, I can say with confidence that I have achieved a lot and I have many things that I can be grateful for, and this includes my current job. As I sat down on Monday morning, to have breakfast that is provided by work, looking out at view of the beautiful city, I realised that moment how much I had taken this life for granted. While many would pay to eat breakfast with this view, I get paid to have this privilege. Suddenly how I felt completely changed. I felt the happiness and satisfaction the first week I started at Google.

I was reminded again of the magical power of gratitude!
Beautifully said, thank you for sharing!😀
I really enjoyed this Caroline. Thank you!
"we have forgotten to be grateful for what we do have and what we have achieved"