I find it amazing how many people complain about how bad they’ve got it, how hard their life is and how dissatisfied they are with everything that happens to them and around them.

Whether it be their job, their house, their car, their working hours, their pay, their boss, their colleagues, you get the idea.

I know it’s hard (and not a habit) for many to reflect on and actually appreciate how great our lives are.

It tends (in my experience) to only happen however when we watch a TV program, read a news story or perhaps hear a radio broadcast about something terrible that’s happened to someone or some town or city before we sit back and think, “You know what, it could be so much, much worse right now”.

When we have that rare moment of reflection, we think about the fact we have a roof over our head, we have some money, we have some food, we have our family and we are healthy.

We appreciate what we have and how important the people around us are.

We sometimes say we’ll change, we’ll do more for and with the people we love, we’ll work harder, we’ll appreciate what we’ve got, however, once our mind moves on to something else, generally within a few minutes, most of us completely forget how we felt and what we promised ourselves we would start to do.

How can we develop the habit of appreciating what we actually have, when we have it?

Someone once told me that we can never fully appreciate and enjoy what we have if we always want something else.  If we’re always looking for more money, a seemingly better car or the bigger house etc. we’re never truly in the moment to enjoy what we actually have.

Is that the problem, do we always want something more? and if so, is that simply the way we are made?

K