What 5 Things Are You Grateful for Today? Let's Begin the Day with Gratitude.

Written by:
Darleen McCullen, REALTOR®, Broker
Keller Williams Realty
Phone: 919.454.8864
Email: darleen@darleenmc.com

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melody Beattie

Instead of complaining about how terrible the real estate market is - or how something didn't go quite the way that we wanted it to today or yesterday, or whenever - let's try something different.

What are 5 (or more!) things for which you're grateful?

I'll start: I'm thankful for:

1) Good health. This is thing that we sometimes don't appreciate until we no longer have it. It's an ongoing challenge for me to remain disciplined to exercise and eat right all the time - but my body is a Temple that must be maintained.

2) Great parents and a loving family. I am so blessed to have been born into my family. The older I get, the more I appreciate them. My parents have loved me through thick and thin. I'm sure there have been times when I've done things that they thought were absolutely nuts (like the time when I left my stable marketing job after 13 years to follow my passion of being a REALTOR®!)

They didn't criticize - but instead have remained supportive of me and any goal I've pursued. My parents have always said, "You can do anything you put your mind to. Believe that you can, and you can!"

3) Being surrounded by wonderful friends. I have also been so blessed to have what I believe are some of the best friends on the planet. Friends who would go to the ends of the Earth to be there for me. These are people I can any time of the day or night -and they would come running to my aid if I needed them. My parents once told me that sometimes in life, if we have one or two true friends, we should consider ourselves truly blessed.

4) A career that I love.  (At least most days).LOL. Real estate has its "moments" like any other career, I suppose. But I can honestly say that I JUMP out of bed to get to work in my business each and every day. I have to force myself to take a break. (Now, that's love!)

5) I am thankful for beautiful surroundings. If I wasn't a real estate broker, my next career would probably be as a public relations professional for the State of North Carolina. I just love my state! We have an incredible number of days when the sun is shining, the climate is relatively mild (with the exception of the hot, humid summers :-) - and it's just so beautiful here.

Here in the Raleigh area where I live, we're 4 hours from the Blue Ridge Mountains; only hours from several beaches including the Outer Banks; 4 hours from ; and approximately 6 hours from . In other words, we're centrally located! Who wouldn't love this beautiful state?

God has really blessed me! I could go on for days and days.