I used to say “I’m grateful for that” the way most people do. Quickly. Without much behind it. The way you say “fine” when someone asks how you’re doing.

Real gratitude is something else.

LoriAnn has been an Ideal Life Vision coach for years and one of the things she introduced me to is the idea that our emotional state is not just a feeling. It is actually a frequency. She uses a framework called the Emotional Momentum Ladder that maps out 22 emotional states, from the lowest; fear, grief, powerlessness; all the way up to the top. You know what sits at the very top? Clarity, love, and appreciation. Gratitude is not just a nice thing to feel. It is the highest vibration a person can operate from.

I believe that now. Took me a while to get there.

When LoriAnn was 18, her parents were killed in a car accident. Six weeks later we were married. I moved into her home to keep her younger sisters out of foster care. We were not sitting around counting our blessings. We were just trying to get through the week. But something happened that I did not expect. People came out of the woodwork. Friends, neighbors, people we barely knew. They helped plan the wedding. They called regularly just to check in and ask what else was needed. They did not wait to be asked. They just saw a need and stepped in. That kind of thing stays with you. It makes you want to be that kind of person. And it makes you stop taking the people around you for granted, because you have seen up close what it looks like when they are suddenly gone.

Then came dental school. I had a seizure, spent years managing a diagnosis that turned out to be wrong, and lost my driving privileges in the process. The day I got back behind the wheel I remember thinking I will never complain about traffic again. I meant it.

Years later I nearly lost the practice I had spent everything building. Numbers dropped, I lost my team, and there were months I was not sure we would make it. Then things turned. The numbers came back, new people came on board, and I remember sitting in my office one evening realizing I had completely forgotten what a gift the whole thing was. I had stopped seeing it.

That is the trap. Something good shows up in your life and after it has been there long enough you quit seeing it as a gift. You start expecting it to always be there. And the moment you start expecting something, the gratitude is gone. You are just taking inventory.

Here is what I have figured out over the years. Gratitude is not a thought. It is a feeling. You can say the words all day long but unless something actually moves in you when you think about what you have, you are just going through the motions. Our health. Our relationships. Our faith. Our freedom to drive down the road on a Tuesday morning with nowhere we have to be. These are gifts. Every one of them.

The good news is that everyone has something. Not the same things, but something they would miss desperately if it were gone tomorrow. Start there. That is the door in.

I still catch myself taking things for granted. LoriAnn, my health, a good morning in Pensacola when the air is right and the day is wide open. But I catch it faster now. And when I do, I stop and let myself actually feel grateful. Not say it. Feel it.

It changes things. More than almost anything else I know.

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