Slow Down Life, Tap The Gratitude Brake

​It's that time of the year again. Thanksgiving is over and now, to use a baseball analogy, we round third and head for home.

Many of us with much velocity.

Thanksgiving is a reminder. A reminder to be grateful. And today I am wondering if maybe it is well positioned on the holiday calendar to be quite a LOUD reminder: the year is coming to an end, don't forget to tap the brakes or you'll once again miss it all.

I've thought about that a lot lately. Gratitude as a brake pedal. Because when it begins to feel like I'm being swept away in the currents of life - both the joyous and the challenging currents - gratitude is always the way I come back to the here and now.

Which is important, because the here and now - that will always be the only place where peace and stability is found. It's never found in reliving yesterday; it's never found in dreaming about tomorrow - it can only be found in the way we look at the here and now. By tapping the gratitude brake and taking a gratitude break.

How many times have I wondered it the past week or so - how did we get here so fast again?

I joked with Elliott the other day. I said it's that time of the year as I plugged the lights in on the Christmas tree that stood in the corner of my living room all year in absolute silence since unplugging the lights the day after Christmas last year.

The tree came instantly alive.

Like magic.

And the real magic was that even though the tree had been dark for 11 months, it felt like the lights had never gone out at all. How does a whole year go buy, EVERY year, in what feels like a day?

Maybe I don't tap the brakes enough.

The gratitude brakes.

Many of us wish we could slow down time. Maybe gratitude is the most effective way to do that.

When life starts dragging us backward into the past, or pulling us forward into the uncontrollable hustle of Black Friday, White Elephant parties, and all the haphazard (and maybe even drunken) momentum that carries us into Christmas - maybe gratitude is our way of pulling on the reins...

Whoa, life!

Life often leaves us feeling like time is our captor. Gratitude is our way of saying, I'm not a big fan of being held captive.

Yesterday, many of us paused and reflected on all that we are grateful for.

Might I suggest that we do that again today.

Might I suggest a gratitude brake.