Little Blessings become BIG blessings!

Little Blessings become BIG ones! One month after Wil Smith (no, not the movie star) and his girlfriend broke up, she informed him she was pregnant. Will stated he would do whatever he had to do to take care of the baby. At the time Olivia was born, Wil was in the Navy. He knew that if he stayed in the service, he would always be leaving his daughter on deployment. So, he left the Navy and was accepted at Bowdoin College. When Olivia was around ten months old, her mother was having a difficult time and reached a breaking point. Will realized that the best thing for Olivia was to take care of her himself. During his first semester at Bowdoin, he lived off-campus with a roommate and held a cleaning job at Staples at night. Sometimes he took the baby to work with him and hid her in the closet. Being honest with himself, Wil admitted he wasn’t ready for college. He later said to his daughter, “Had I not been able to kiss you good night every night before studying, I would not have had the strength to do it. There were times when the only way I could get through was to check in on you and see you sleeping, then go back to my studies.” In his second semester, a women who worked at Bowdoin helped him move to campus housing. Even though he was the first single father raising a child on campus, things were finally getting better. Wil was grateful to know that Olivia was with him and safe. He appreciated that she was easy to care for. She was quiet, didn’t bother anyone, and adapted to school right away. Wil brought her to class, gave her crayons and other things to do, and Olivia sat sit at a desk and kept herself entertained. Olivia’s first babysitters were Wil’s basketball teammates. He would come from class and find four giant guys and his eighteen-month-old child tearing up the room. He trusted those guys with Olivia. When Will graduated, he carried Olivia in his arms to get his diploma. “They called both of our names. All my classmates stood up and cheered. They gave me the only standing ovation of the day.” As Wil describes it, having Olivia was a drastic change in his life, but it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He told Olivia, “I felt like before you came along, my mother, my guardian angel who passed away on my fifteenth birthday, was looking down from heaven and got tired of me drifting through the universe and said, ‘God, please do something. Send that boy someone to take care of.’” Wil tells that when he was present in the delivery room at Olivia’s birth, “I physically felt something go into my heart. It was a feeling of completeness that I hadn’t felt since my mother had passed.” This gratitude has spread to Olivia, as well. She came home from school to take care of her father when he was sick. She said, “That first week, when I was home from school, I would cook you dinner, and it made me happy being able to care for you, knowing that my whole life, you were doing that for me. You’re my rock.” Wil and Olivia Smith personify gratitude. Gratitude for each other, for the opportunity to make a difference, to offer care, and to really love. Living in gratitude is a law of nature. When you accept and are at peace with your current status, things begin to change naturally, easily. Deep, sincere gratitude sows the seeds that blossom in abundance. This is a principle of nature and it is magnetic. When people feel acknowledged and appreciated by you, they more readily acknowledge and appreciate you. When you are grateful for all you have and all you have experienced, even the seemingly bad stuff, your life expands. Gratitude is an elevated energy. When you feel it, you are also elevated. Everyone can experience gratitude whenever they want. Look to all that is beautiful and let go of that which seems imperfect. Your mind is pliable. Decide where you want to focus it. To magnetize abundance, joy, love, health, and all good things to you, live in an attitude of gratitude. This is how you do it. Instead of focusing on what isn’t working, give some love and attention to the things that are. Take a mental inventory of all the things, events, people, and opportunities for which you are grateful. With consistent practice, you will notice that the negative way of thinking will begin to shift. You’ll be able to experience the happiness that is waiting for you. Here is an exercise: Begin each morning with appreciation for everything and all possibilities. As you do this, expand your feeling so that this sense of gratitude fills the room. Then, end your day with gratitude for all you have experienced and all the ways you have given and received. Again, expand your energy. When you sleep with this high energy, your mind will be working through the night on all the ways to bring abundance into your life. As you do this exercise, make sure you have at least five things on your gratitude list, morning and evening, and keep adding to the list. Your energy will expand and soar! (This story is excerpted from Be Outrageous: Do the Impossible - Others have and you can too! by Jean Walters - available on Amazon.com) Jean Walters is also author of Set Yourself Free: Live the Life YOU were meant to Live! available on Amazon.com and Dreams and the Symbology of Life by Jean Walters-Lucy website: http://www.spiritualtransformation.com