Gratitude as an Antidote to Sadness

It's been a tough couple of days.

So I'm thinking it's time to remind myself of what I should be grateful for. I started to write that on a piece of paper but decided that perhaps sharing it with you might be of value to you, for example, encouraging you to write what you're grateful for. So here goes:

I am grateful for my wife, Dr. Barbara Nemko. She is a wise and kind woman. We've been together 40 years and plan to stay together forever. For that, I am deeply grateful.

I am grateful for my good health. I will be 63 years old next Sunday, have no significant health problems, and still have all the energy I had when I was younger. I am deeply grateful.

I am grateful to have a career that I continue to love even though I've been doing it for 26 years: I still love working with my career and personal coaching clients. And because more people want to work with me than I have room in my schedule for, I have the privilege of being able to pick the clients I most believe in and for whom I can likely add the most value. It is a privilege indeed to help so many good people live a life--at work and outside--that they feel good about. I am deeply grateful.

I am grateful that, in addition to my main career, I have exciting sideline careers. In October, I begin my 25th year as host of Work with Marty Nemko on a National Public Radio station in San Francisco. I write weekly for USNews.com and for AOL.com and monthly for the Mensa periodical, The Intelligencer. I am trying to spearhead major, albeit long-shot, education reform efforts. I'm involved in the theatre world, including recently having directed, co-written, and piano-accompanied a one-woman show that audiences have loved. I am deeply grateful to have such opportunities and that there's an extensive Wikipedia entry on me. 

I am grateful for my doggie, Einstein. I live in the world of nuance and of trying to understand what lies beneath people's surface. It is a relief to know that with Einstein, what I see, is what I get: pure unadulterated love. I am grateful for that.

Finally, I am grateful to you, the readers of this blog. I have an irrepressible desire to share my thoughts with you (over 1,000 posts, 1,000 of my published articles and columns on my website, 1,500 tweets plus seven books) and so appreciate that you read them. I also appreciate your comments, even when they disagree with me. The vast majority of those are respectful and constructive. I consider thoughtful disagreement to be one of the Internet's many pluses. I am grateful.

It felt good to write this. By any chance, does my having written what I feel grateful for make you want to write what you're grateful for? Of course, I understand if you want to write that privately but I invite you to write that as a comment on this blog post.