Within the past year or so, I made a conscious effort to be more grateful for everything in my life. I made a point to realize that every day is a blessing that I should be thankful for and I have started to notice a shift in my happiness. I do not feel that my life is that different from a typical life, I just treat ordinary experiences as blessings. I am blessed to wake up every morning, blessed to be married to my best friend, blessed to have a family and friends that I can count on always, blessed to have a cat that waits for me at the front door at night! Just blessed. If you start to treat each experience in life as a gift, your overall level of happiness will rise.  Being able to go out for dinner or spend the day by the pool are really just everyday things, unless you start to think of them as blessings (spending the day by the pool is DEFINITELY a blessing during the winter!!).

Sometimes I cannot believe the opportunities that I’m given. I feel so blessed on a daily basis in my life, that sometimes I worry it is inevitable that something bad is going to happen. However inevitable that really may be, I want to thank God every day for what I do have right now, and stop worrying about what will happen tomorrow. I will take advantage of the opportunities that arise and always be gracious they do.

Yesterday that opportunity was Oprah. I was fortunate enough to get a ticket to see Oprah interviewed at work yesterday (tickets were gone in four minutes!). To be honest, I wasn’t exactly expecting much. I have never been a huge Oprah fan and haven’t ever really watched her shows, with the exception of a few that had guests I really wanted to see. I didn’t expect to be moved or inspired during my lunch break yesterday, but that’s exactly what happened.

When I graduated eighth grade, we were all given an award to describe our personalities (small private school). I was given the Harpo (Oprah’s production company) award and voted ‘Most Likely to Have Her Own Talk Show.’ What can I say, I guess I’ve always been a little outspoken. So when I took my seat in the auditorium (third row!!) yesterday, I was just expecting an interesting lunch break. Maybe I’d learn what I “could have been” if I followed my eighth grade prediction. I figured I would attend the interview and if it was boring, oh well. The interview was anything but. She was incredibly inspiring, motivating, and quite thrilling to be blunt. She encouraged students (majority of the audience) to strive to find their life’s purpose, and to build upon that purpose.  One of the best quotes I think she said during the interview is below:

How true is that statement? I feel as a twenty-something young adult, I am constantly wondering what it is that I SHOULD do. I don’t spend enough time realizing that I already know so much of what I don’t want to do. I think a lot of people have this narrowed down when it comes to relationships; we all know what we don’t want in a potential partner. But how easily could that relate to our career, or even just life, as well? It may be tough or overwhelming to really know what it is that you want to do, but just thinking of everything you know you don’t want to do is a hell of an accomplishment.

So overall, yesterday was a true blessing. It came in the way of Oprah, and that’s just fine with me. I’m sure I’m not the first person to be inspired by something Oprah said, but I was definitely surprised. I took the opportunity to thank God for everything in my life, and I will try to illuminate the world! 🙂