Gratitude Post – January 2022

“When you are Grateful; Fears disappears and Abundance appears – Tony Robbins

It’s a joy for me to write this post for the first month of the New Year!  January 2022 welcomed me after an exciting month of December 2021- which was a great month with so many celebrations. I am grateful and blessed to have stepped into this New Year, not just me but family and my extended family too. Despite the fact that new variants of  COVID 19 was making its way into the communities with an increase of infections everywhere around us; except that there were not many deaths.

The first two weeks of this month kept me very busy at work, virtual training's adjusting with times zones, coordinating and facilitating took a lot of my time. I was happy that I could do these things and interacting with resourceful people makes it worthwhile as there is so much learning.I am grateful for all the learnings of these training's and updating myself with the knowledge and skills.

This month there was a progress review of my research, which kept me busy in updating my work and putting everything together for the presentation. I managed it along with my regular work which was tiring and stressful; the weather suddenly became very cold and the prediction was for a week to 10 days the temperature was reaching closer to 9 degrees.

Due to work load and managing work and pushing myself to pursue my research was a challenging task and I fell sick with cold, and too much cough for a whole week and I visited the doctor a couple of times and few days managed to work from home and also continue tele counseling. I am grateful that with the help of doctor and my family who were caring and thoughtful – I did not have to take the stress of planning meals and kitchen work, I feel so grateful for all the help I received when I was unwell and with love and concern from the family and prayers of family and friends I am back to the normal.

This month there were two birthdays one was on the 14^th January, 2022 was my eldest brothers another one was my nephew’s wife on the 17^th January, 2022. 

I was glad that my nephew celebrated my dad’s birthday and his wedding anniversary on the 9^th of January, 2022 at his place.  It was a pleasure to be with the family, with  good food, a lot of sharing about my dad and my mom and their stories of faith, generosity and how they managed to raise 9 children and still helped extended families. We relived those days with love and gratitude, a sense of comfort, fulfillment and togetherness helped us bond.

Dorothy started her online classes as this is the final year of the graduation, and with only a couple of months to complete the syllabus, she was busy with assignments and internal assessments. I am grateful that she did well as she was nervous as to how she will manage, but she did well and cleared the 5^th semester exams. Now she is busy with 6^th semester and academics keeps her busy and she too had cold and cough and fever for few days, along with David somehow with Dolo, Paracetamol, Vitamins C, D, B12, along with warm water gargle and steam inhalation we managed to get back to health..

I am grateful to God that we are alive and recovered back to health. David continued his work at his office with only one more month to complete his retirement; officially he retires from work on February 6^th 2022 and will work for the whole month. He was happy thinking about his service, serving 16 years in the army, and 26 years in the Accountant General office and all the struggles he faced reaching 60 years in age- recalling his mom and his family and how as the eldest son of his family fulfilled all the responsibility, he wanted to express his gratitude and thank all those who were part of his journey, family, extended family and his friends who were helpful companions.

This month there was a death in our friend circle, David’s friends son was killed in an accident and it was devastating for the family, as he was the only son and was returning home from his cousin’s house.. it was a disturbing news  that he had go so soon, he was just 30 years old. Unfortunately he died on his father’s birthday ie. 31^st January, 2022.

Sometimes these situations remind us that life is so uncertain and unpredictable, and we not only need to be grateful every moment of our lives; but even live life everyday as if it is the last day of our lives.. Today I got a beautiful message on whatsapp from one of friend. I don’t know the author, but the lines are beautiful:

Unused money devalues.

 Unused talent diminishes.

 Unused potential decays.

Unused machinery disintegrates.

Unused time dies.

Unused knowledge becomes a burden.

What isn’t used is abused.

The tragedy of life isn’t the ultimate death, but the resources that die within you when you are still alive.

Use it, or you will lose it.

The month of January was mixture of everything together, beginning with joys, sorrow, some gains and experiences of pain, sickness, sadness, death, celebrations. The most important aspect of this month was plenty of learnings and abundance of gratitude.  I am so glad to write this post today, with determination to complete as I am delayed for almost 15 days but decided that I do this post, writing gratitude post has its own benefits; Gratitude eliminates stress, rewires our brain, boosts our self esteem, improves sleep and protects us from negative thinking.

I thank you for reading this post and hope this first month of New Year was a great one! I pray for protection and safety for all of us may healing flow in each of us, like wounded healers let us together heal the world.

 May you be Happy & Blessed!