Gratitude is integral to the managing the business of you.  It is the readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.  This appreciation when applied to ourselves is to recognize our strengths and weaknesses while looking forward to the threats and opportunities ahead.  Being kind to ourselves enables us to turn our weakness into opportunities to learn and grow.  Although we often use our strength to defend against threats, our strengths can just as easily become threats to future opportunities if we do not know and put them in their place.  We have to respect the positive and negative aspects or ourselves.  Without the constant struggle between opportunities and threats or strengths and weaknesses, we would not be where we are now.  We would not learn and grow.  We would stagnate and lose our diversity.  For this reason it behooves us to be grateful for our interdependent system of internal strengths and weaknesses as well as our external opportunities and threats, embracing both the internal and external.

When we recognize the full worth of something it is necessary to look at it from many perspectives.  Often when people think of gratitude they think of only the good things in life and strive to be thankful for them.  An attitude of gratitude results from looking at all aspects of our lives and appreciating them for what they are.  If there are negative things or what we perceive as obstacles, these can become the way to more capability, better understanding or experience.  So, when we look around on this American holiday of giving thanks for the blessing of the harvest, be sure to not only look at the external things in our lives but also look within.  Be thankful for our current situation as it will become our future.