Unfortunately the recent Australia Day Honours were overshadowed by the Prime Minister’s incredible decision regarding the Duke of Edinburgh.
What the day should have been about is recognising how fortunate we all are living in Australia and recognising the contributions made by a number of outstanding members of our community, many of whom have been contributing for many, many years.
We should all be grateful that we have such wonderful people in our community and remember that for every person who received official recognition, there are thousands of others who have made major contributions to their communities over the years and have not received awards. Very few would be seeking recognition – most do it because the work needs to be done.
Think how much worse our society and our country would be without the ongoing efforts of thousands of unselfish contributors.
The point that I’m trying to make here is that we should be grateful for the many wonderful things that we have in Australia. Too often we take them for granted and complain about what we haven’t got.
Think about it for a minute. We live in a free, democratic society, most heavily populated areas have a comfortable climate and a clean and healthy environment, we have good medical, educational and transport infrastructure, social security support, the rule of law and a first world economy. There are billions of people on this earth who share very few of these benefits.
On a more personal level, many of us still focus much of our thinking on what we don’t have and show little awareness or gratitude for what we do. This is a recipe for being unsatisfied, envious and unhappy. It’s a scientifically proven fact that this kind of negative thinking has a major impact on our lives and is likely to make a bad situation worse.
Being grateful isn’t hard to do and it has a very positive effect on our attitude and thinking.
If you take a couple of minutes either at the start of finish of the day to think about some of the good things that you have, or have happened to you and be grateful for them, you are filling your mind with positive thoughts and this has a highly beneficial impact on both your mind and your body.
What and how we think has a major impact on our lives and the way we respond to the world around us.
So be grateful for the work done by all the contributors in our community and hope that our Prime Minister is grateful for some sensible advice that I suspect his colleagues are happy to give him.