To my American friends, may you have a delightful and peaceful Thanksgiving, one that permits much joy and happiness. To all my other friends and followers in Canada and around the world, may we also use this moment to pause and reflect on what we are thankful for!
I am so thankful for having had the wonderful opportunity, for over 30 years, to share my insight and enthusiasm for tomorrow from the stage, the books I have authored, the magazine and newspaper columns I wrote, and the radio shows I was a part of. It is a unique career, being a futurist and a speaker, and I really could not have imagined that it would be so wonderful. I am grateful for my many speaker bureau partners and agents who have had the confidence to introduce me to their clients around the world.
I am so overwhelmingly thankful for the singular and spectacular joy that is given to me by a wife who has been steadfast, supportive, and loving for almost 35 years, allowing me the opportunity to pursue this odd career, while at the same time, rarely complaining that she gave up her own. Each and every day - and even more so every day - I marvel as I watch her go through her day, and her ability to care for others before she even begins to worry herself with her own concerns.
I am so thankful to watch my two young boys grow into strong, focused, mature, and caring young men who inspire everyone around them with their focus on love and success. I am equally thankful for the remarkable young woman they have welcomed into their lives as their wives - I am so thrilled to have two daughters-in-law who are each unique in their own way and yet so wonderfully the same in their love for my sons and my wife and I.
I am stunningly thankful to live in my home country of Canada, and that even while it is caught up in the swirling tide of hate, extremism, and difficult political viewpoints that define our world today, still remains a bastion of caring for our fellow man and woman through the world's most advanced social programs. I'm never really grateful when I see the tax money that flows out of my business, but all I have to do is look around and see a society that provides a bedrock of healthcare and social platforms for those less fortunate, and I realize I am blessed.
I am grateful for my new neighbors who express such comfort and care - cookies! - and the wonderful region that we moved into just a few short years ago. I am stunned by the fact that I am but yards away from the beauty of nature, and that each and every day, when I'm not traveling, I have the opportunity to chase the sunrise directly after writing my Daily Inspiration. I am thankful that my focus on clean living provides me the good health such that I can chase the sunrise!
I am grateful for the ability to have achieved a state of clarity and steadfastness in my mind each and every day by being relentlessly focused on my mission of living a better life, and by starting every work day for the last 7 1/2 years by committing my thoughts to this Daily Inspiration; I write it as much for myself as I do for my followers. I am grateful that there is a tool called Grammarly that silently and quickly undertakes the role to correct my horrific spelling as I type these words, bleary-eyed, first thing each morning as I wake up with my coffee.
I am thankful for coffee.
And I am grateful to each and every one of you who follows these posts and might make it to the end of an occasional one, and who might find themselves touched in a moment here and there with the inspiration I am trying to share with you.
Grateful and thankful!
Jim Carroll is particularly grateful for coffee.