Everyday I practice simple gratitude. This practice of presence helps ground me by looking at the most mundane moments of my life and consciously practicing gratitude in that moment. For example, this morning I was grateful for waking up without an alarm, for time to read a book, with a programmable thermostat, having fuzzy slippers, for a faucet that gives me clean water, for electricity to make my tea, for money to pay for electricity and to buy tea, etc., truly there is so much I have to be grateful for.

And when I awoke this morning my heart was heavy. Heavy with heartache and sadness for the world but in my heart there was also beauty, joy and a lot of gratitude. Living consciously doesn’t mean we ignore the sadness and pain and focus only on the “good” it means that we allow whatever arises to be there, authentically. We learn to embrace the word AND, in doing so we come into collaboration with all of life.

While the world is stewing in much darkness we can still choose what to focus on. We can still decide what kind of person we wish to be in the world and take actions to live that way. We can still be grateful for where we are and what we have and work to continuously make the world a better place.

Need more inspiration? Check out this video of gratitude from Louie Schwartzberg.