1. My salvation
2. My life
3. My wife, who puts up with me
4. My son
5. The rest of my family
6. My country
7. The men and women who have put themselves in harm’s way to ensure my freedom
8. My friends
9. Baseball
10. MLB.tv; baseball on the internet!
11. Thanksgiving leftovers
12. My iPod
13. My clothes
14. My shoes
15. A roof over my head
16. Chili-lime turkey cooked on a charcoal grill
17. Mashed potatoes and gravy
18. Cornbread-chorizo stuffing (you’ve got to try it)
19. Not having to eat that green bean/cream of mushroom soup/fried onion cassarole anymore since I’m an adult now and I can plan my own Thanksgiving menu
20. Snow
21. My dog
22. Those rare weekend days when my son sleeps past 7 am
23. Books!
24. The rights I have as an American
25. Utility services that are constantly running
26. My education
27. The guy who cuts me off in traffic, in order that I might learn patience (I’m still not very good at this one)
28. The fact that I’ve been able to go to five new countries this year that I’ve never been to before.
29. Hot showers
30. Dewdrops on roses
31. Wiskers on kittens
32. Bright copper kettles
33. Warm wollen mittens
34. Brown paper packages tied up with strings  (Sorry, Julie Andrews just hijacked this post.  We’re back.)
35. The fact that I have a new job that doesn’t involve menial accounting tasks
36. Living in Boise, ID.  I’ve lived a lot of other places in this country, and I like this one the best.
37. My countless number of electronic toys and gadgets.  I love technology.
38. New haircuts
39. Doughnuts
40. Candy
41. Cookies
42. Chubby Hubby by Ben & Jerry’s
43. Any kind of ice cream, really
44. Pizza
45. Chinese food
46. Italian food
47. A guacamole-bacon cheeseburger
48. Exercise
49. Facebook, for allowing me to reconnect with old friends
50. Fireplaces
51. Central air conditioning
52. King-sized beds
53. Caffinated beverages
54. My past
55. The people who’ve helped me become the man I am today.

Today is Thanksgiving here in the US.  Wishing all of you a happy one.  One of the keys to success is being grateful for the good and the bad that come your way.  What are you thankful for?  Let us know in the comments…

Had an interesting article emailed to me by reader Marty.  It was called “Be Lucky – It’s An Easy Skill To Learn“, and it was great.

The premise, as you might expect from the title, is that being lucky (or unlucky) is something that you control.  Sure, random events occur in everyone’s life, but you can create good luck for yourself if you concentrate on doing so.  I’ve touched on the idea of creating good luck in a previous post.

What are the keys to becoming lucky?

1.  Create and notice chance opportunities. “Unlucky” folks don’t realize when opportunities are available to take advantage of.  The reason for this is that most of them are concentrating on what they want to have happen at any given time.  They feel that they know what should occur in a given situation, and they concentrate only on seeing that result.  Even if it does happen, they may have missed out on something even better.

2.  Listen to intuition. Your gut gives you clues all the time in situations you encounter.  People who make their own luck listen to it.  Rather than being rational and looking only at the facts, allow your intuition to factor in to your decision-making process.

3.  Allow positive expectations to create self-fulfilling prophecies. By looking for the best, we will instruct our sub-conscious mind to recognize good opportunities when they present themselves.  Conversely, we notice only the things that go wrong when we expect the worst.  There are some great examples of experiments that prove this out in the article itself.

4.  Adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. The classic “make lemonades out of lemons” situation.  It’s okay to acknowledge that your present circumstances aren’t the most pleasant or beneficial, but you have to truly believe that better things are coming.  Take a critical look at what’s really going on in your life (not an emotional one that only notices the bad points and skips over the good) and find out how to use the skills and resources available to you to profit from your current situation.

What’s the real problem here?  As I see it, many people who read this article, my site, and others like it, will dismiss the advice as too optimistic/starry-eyed/Pollyanna-ish for real life.  These folks (and I have been one myself at times, don’t get me wrong) pride themselves on being “realists”, not allowing anyone to put rose-colored glasses in front of their eyes.

The problem is that these folks have just as unrealistic a view of life as do those who see life being a constant stream of puppies and ice cream.  Real life isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly not out to get you, either.  You need to make honest evaluations of the good and the bad in your situations, while always maintaining the four characteristics listed above.

I’m reminded of the boy who got a pile of horse crap for Christmas.  He started digging through it with gusto as his father asked him what in the world he was doing.  The boy’s response?  “With this much horse poop, I know there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere!”

The truth is that nothing happens until we take action.  Circumstances change, but the only thing we can control is our response to them.  If we have a positive outlook, things will begin to turn around for us.

What about you?  How do you make your own luck?  What tips do you have for maintaining a positive attitude in the face of negative circumstances?  Let us know in the comments….