JJ,
I have to share one of the most powerful gratitude experiences I've ever had. I was washing dishes, there were a lot of them, and everyone else (all hubby's family) was sitting in the living room. The kitchen is small, I like it when hubby gets time to play with his grandchildren, and was ok with doing them all. But it was tedious. So I started praying...first it was thank you for the food that was on the dishes, then it became this amazingly powerful thing...as I held each dish or glass or piece of cutlery, I thought of all of the people responsible for bringing that item to my sink...do you have any idea how enormous that list of people can get? People in factories, people who support the people in factories, truckers, packers, people who forge the stainless steel, people who paint the dishes, people on assembly lines all along the way...my imagination carried me through the entire process and all of the people who had touched that dish or that glass or that fork...not to mention all the people responsible for the FOOD - farmers, plowers, harvesters...let your mind just try and ripple through all of that. By the end of the dishes, I felt connected to the entire world, because there would definitely be a global connection to most of those things reaching the stores/my house. Oh, and then I had to also thank God for all the people responsible for building my house and the sink, etc, etc.

VERY powerful. Really opened my eyes.