Today in the morning I thought about my life in general. And once I read a book and made some notes, which I read again this morning. Reading these notes motivate me a lot and I do read them once in a while to remember what is important for me in my personal life.
A few years ago I wrote down some values I have for my life and one is GRATITUDE. Sometimes I am better in it than other days. But I want to remind myself of the good things in my life, and there are a LOT of things in my life, for which I am very grateful for.
More than a year ago I started to write a gratitude journal each evening and I wrote down 5 things I am grateful for this day. And the next morning I read these 5 things again and thanked God for it. It is so good to focus on the good things in our life! I want to start this journal again, cause I did it only a short period of time.
Because of my work I travel a lot and I also fly to India once in a while. There I see a strong contrast of rich and poor. My heart is always very heavy, when I see the conditions many people live in – living in the streets or in a slum.
Once I walked out of the hotel I stayed in and I took my nice summer leather shoes to put a new sole on it. I walked about 5 minutes and there I saw a very old man sitting on the street with a lot of shoes – repairing them. So I thought I ask him. He said I should leave the shoes for a few hours, so that he could repair them. So I left the shoes there. Later when I told somebody this story, the person shook his head saying: wow, you really left the shoes there? So good you got them back! And only then I realized, that I am a very trusting person, not thinking bad of people. Probably this was the first time ever that he got to repair expensive shoes like mine. He could have sold them or somebody could have stolen them in the streets where he was sitting. But NO!
This nice old man put such a beautiful nice sole on my shoes – even better then the ones before (even than the original italian sole!). I still have these shoes and I always think back on this experience!
When I gave the man the money, he was so grateful. He deserved much more then he wanted – so I gave him of course more (cause it was cheap for me anyways). He had such a smile on his face when I left. I never forget how he was sitting there in the heat, on the ground with all these shoes – and in the midst of all these shoes, my fancy italian ones.
