MM223 - Blessings; Watch for Them and Acknowledge Them

Blessings come in both large and small packages. Often we get so wrapped up in our day to day living that we may either take blessings for granted or fail to recognize them altogether.

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♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to Morning Mindset podcast, and once again, I am still your host Paul Markel and thank you again for joining me. Today we're going to talk about blessings. But before we get into the very specific topic of the day, Blessings; Watch for Them and Acknowledge Them, let's talk about what a blessing is. Do we even know anymore in our modern world? In our current culture and Society do we actually acknowledge the fact that blessings and to be blessed exist at that exist in our world are their blessings and what is a blessing may say "Well blessing, I'm from the south and a blessing is when you for each food you sit down you say the blessing you bless the food.

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Yes, but what is a blessing to you or I a blessing is not something that you are owed. Okay, you are not owed a blessing you are not owed that it's not something that that to you work for you can't work for a blessing, you can't purchase a blessing. A blessing is something that is given freely, and nothing you can say or do-, it's like grace. Nothing you can say or do can earn you a blessing. Now you may be a good person and you may lead a good life, and because you are a good person and you lead a good life, blessings come to you.

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But you can't go and buy them, and no one owes you them, and they're not obligated to give them to you. A blessing is something that someone gives to you of their own free will, or you could say that God gives them to you of his own free will, because they care about you because they love you. It's not something that they owed you, but they do it because they care they do it because they're generous.

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They do it because they're-, often I believe in our world, in our modern society. We are so busy doing what we need to do there. If you are a young parent, you are so busy with your job in your career and your daycares and your after-school activities, and your this isn't your that we become so busy and so wrapped up in our lives that we forget to take notes. Blessings, whether they are large or small, we get so wrapped up in our day-to-day lives, we take blessings for granted what we fail to recognize them all together.

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Recently, I was sitting down at the table with my wife and we were talking about a situation that we find ourselves in and not specifically so much ourselves, my wife and I, but a situation that our oldest son is in, and there's a person who has been a tremendous blessing, not necessarily to my wife and I but he's been a tremendous blessing to our oldest son, and I mentioned that to her I said, "This person has been a tremendous blessing to our oldest son", and she said, "You know, you're absolutely right" and we just took a moment, the two of us, to acknowledge that.

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How often do we Overlook or take for granted blessings in our lives? I believe that that they are out there that if you are a good person if you are a moral person, I believe that if you don't cheat trying to cheat people or deceive them or take what doesn't belong to you that you will probably encounter blessings on a regular basis. But I also believe that many of us we see them or they occur, but they're so small that we don't take the time to appreciate them.

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For instance, your wife said, and this is me, you get a text from your wife and she said "Before you come home, stop at the store and get coffee cream and bread" or whatever, fill-in-the-blank, right? So you do go to the grocery store you get those two items you walk up to the counter and there's somebody with an entire cart full of groceries, and you have two items that you could easily pay for in 38 seconds and be out of the store, because all you want to do is pay for your two items get out of store and go home because you're on your way home.

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You wish you weren't there anyway, and the person sees you standing there with just two items as says hey just go ahead and jump in front of me. Did they owe you that? Did you just deserve it? Did they have to do that for you? No, they don't have to do that for you. But that is a small blessing. You know, you were in a hurry because you're running late because of life and you pull into the parking spot, and you find that perfect right up in front spot the one that's never there. That was a blessing, it was. Someone goes out of their way to help you, to aid you, to assist you, [they] didn't have to do it. But they did it.

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That is a blessing. Do we take the time to recognize and acknowledge the blessings that come into our lives? Sometimes blessings are just a circumstance. Like I said before, you're in a super hurry and you pull in and you see a spot right up front, and that never happens, but you got it and you're in and out, boom. The person says "Hey go ahead and jump in front of me. You only have two items. Just go ahead and do it", [they] didn't have to do it, but they did. Sometimes blessings are people going out of their way to help us to assist us, to educate us, to maybe hip us to something that we didn't know or weren't aware of.

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How many of you are new on a job or new in your career field you show up and somebody takes their time to show you around you don't have to or they tell you what's not in the employee handbook or what's not in the 3-ring binder. What was not in the PowerPoint. They give you those little helpful hints to that age you and kind of smooth your way, your smooth your path. Even though it's not in the official company PowerPoint.

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I talked about Sgt. Sizemore previously and how Sgt. Sizemore, he was one of those guys. He was a blessing to us, not because he was nice to us, not because he was kind, but he was kind. Because he gave us more than he had to, that little Lagniappe that we've talked about previously. I guess you know, a Lagniappe is a type of a blessing, that little something extra. So as you progress throughout your week, throughout your year, your month or year, whatever. I want you to take the time and think about it. It'll make you feel better.

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You know, if you think and acknowledge "Hey, you know what? This person, that person, this situation actually turned out to be a blessing. I didn't realize it was going to be, I didn't know it was going to happen. But there it was, I couldn't buy it. I couldn't expect it. I couldn't demand it." You cannot demand blessings. You know a lot of us get used to buying and demanding things. "I have money and I can get whatever I want" and what you can't get, you can't get blessings and don't care how much money is in your bank account and I don't care how powerful of a person you are.

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You cannot demand them because they come to you freely, and when you get those things when they show up to take a moment to acknowledge them, and if you haven't acknowledged any blessings in your life lately, or you say "Well Paul it's easy for you to say, you know, because your path is paved in Gold." It's not, but I don't ever have that. I bet you that if you get up if this is the morning and you're drinking your coffee or whatever and you're getting ready to begin your day, I bet you that you'll experience at least one blessing today if you pay attention, and look for it. So that is the Morning Mindset for today. It's number 2-2-3. Geez Louise we’re already on #223. Can you believe it? I am your host Paul Markel, and I will talk to you again real soon.

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♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

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