Give thanks is a commandment repeated many times in the Bible. God is everywhere, all around me. The Holy Spirit lives in me. God is controlling every circumstance around me to shape me and teach me to be like Jesus in character. I am a child of God, headed for eternity with Him. I want to cultivate an attitude of gratitude all the time, about everything, no matter the circumstances. My natural tendency is to see the bad and to react negatively to it, to be critical, grumble, and get irritated, upset, and angry. The negative, critical journey begins in my head, in my thoughts, then comes out in words to others, and finally results in disagreements that can grow into major conflicts, even with people I am very close to. I can take my negative thoughts captive and rejoice always about everything. Every morning, I pray a prayer of commitment, declaring Jesus as Lord of my life, and in that prayer, I make commitments about several things I will do in obedience to Jesus as my Lord. One of them is, “I will rejoice always and grumble about nothing.” I then ask God to give me the power to keep my commitments. It is a slow journey that I am winning little by little. The biggest battle now is the news, especially politics, and conversations that pop up throughout the day about various events and views. As soon as I have a negative thought or a critical word about anything I choose to set my mind on, “Rejoice always, thank You Lord for saving me, grumble and complain about nothing, God’s bondservant must not be argumentative, my ability to change things is not from complaining about them but in prayer about them, I trust You Jesus to use me however You choose to influence those around me, You will do that when I am obedient to You.” I have memorized that self-talk statement; it is 55 words long and has significant power to control my life and move me toward being a person with an attitude of gratitude, relaxed, at peace, and full of joy. Give it a try, it is free.