Thanksgiving and the upcoming holiday season offer a great opportunity to celebrate all the good in our lives. What’s really powerful is that being grateful can be contagious. However, heartfelt gratitude requires effort…
Why is effort necessary you may ask?
Because we are being over inundated by fear and negativity. Think about it, outside sources like the television, social media and many newspapers are overwhelming us 24 hours a day 365 days a year us with more of the same. Unfortunately, the vast number of people we come in contact with everyday continue to beat the same drum of worrisome music.
What’s happened is we’ve been condition to give away our independent thinking and instead put our confidence in the powers of so-called experts. We’ve unknowingly empowered them to be our guiding light.
Nobody said it’s going to be easy but it can be simple.
The challenge is, we’ve been hearing their noise for so long that we have become numb to the effects on our well being. Ultimately, we have become comfortable with the media’s projected pain it causes us and the ones we love. The problem is if we continue to concentrate on these projected troubles, we’ll lose sight of the beauty that surrounds us.
So, what can we do you may ask?
We can choose to change the channel and not engage the chaos. That’s not to say that we want to bury our heads in the snow but rather refocus our energies on the simple things in our lives that warm our hearts, bring us joy and make us laugh.
Here’s a simple suggestion that may help and can take less than five minutes the next time the stress of the holidays becomes overwhelming:
Simply close your eyes and take enough slow deep breaths to redirect your concentration on the people, places and activities you love until you feel inspired to smile and move for the good in the direction that’s beneficial to you and the ones you love…
When practiced on a daily basis, like brushing your teeth, the positive energy you create will grow exponentially. Like any other discipline it requires effort.
Much of the good around us is taken for granted like the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we fuel our bodies with not to mention our loved ones we share our love with.
Here’s some regional pluses to focus your energies:
Right now, is the perfect opportunity to promote the Rutland Region as the next great place to live! In a national poll, Vermont has been voted the number one destination, surpassing Hawaii, as the healthiest place to live.
We currently have many positive pieces set in place to help make Rutland County a highly desirable primary residence destination where people, businesses and the community at large can thrive!
We have just been exposed for the past three years internationally to well over twenty million people annually by NBC Sports because the Women’s World Cup Ski Racing was held at Killington Mountain Resort. We have the opportunity to renew this amazing event because collectively our community helped make it a great success.
We have roughly 1.5 million people visiting our region annually because of Killington, Pico and Okemo Resorts. Our mountains and lakes are beautiful natural attractions which draw the recreational enthusiasts here year-round. We have large organizations here offering employment. There are numerous entrepreneurial ventures popping up monthly. Comparable real estate pricing makes our region one of the most desirable in the north east to buy.
If you place Rutland City at the center and drive six hours in any direction north, south, east or west it encompasses over fifty million people. Within that circle there are well over a million businesses with the capacity and willingness to have their workers perform their responsibilities for work from anywhere because of the advancement of technology today.
We are marketing our region as one of the great destinations for remote workers to be able to live, work, play and raise a family. Collectively we have come to understand sustainable growth is imperative to our region’s health and prosperity. By adding a few hundred to a thousand new residents here who can work remotely for businesses down country can be a game changer.
I am grateful for this beautiful place I call home and feel blessed to share it with my family and friends.
Wishing you a healthy and happy holiday season as well as a hope filled new year,
Chris
