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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. Good morning, Radicals, and happy Thanksgiving Day to you. Please forgive my raspy voice. My throat has chosen to inform me that it would like a break. And of course, I'm seeking to provide a break for it as we enjoy the Thanksgiving Day holiday here in the United States.

But I did want to make an exception here and take a quick moment to greet you and say happy Thanksgiving Day to you and draw one or two encouragement, pieces of encouragement for you from this holiday. The Thanksgiving Day holiday this week in the United States is actually my favorite holiday.

And it's a holiday that has great meaning for the simplicity of the idea, the idea of giving thanks to God for all of the great blessings that we have. Financially speaking, if you were looking for one valuable thing that you could do that would, I believe in the fullness of time, really transform your life, make a habit of systematically noticing the good things in your life, the blessings in your life, and being thankful for those things.

If your heart is filled with gratitude and thanksgiving, it's very hard to maintain some of the negative emotions. It's very hard to maintain fear and anger when your heart is filled with gratitude and thanksgiving. And there's probably the best time to sit down and look carefully at your life and consider the many things that we have to be thankful for.

Very frequently, we find it easy to forget the many good things that we enjoy until something goes wrong. An example that always is very meaningful to me, from time to time, I get a canker sore in my mouth. And I think this is common to all people, but every few months, every six months or so, I probably get a canker sore in my mouth.

It turns my mouth into a very painful environment. Makes it hard to eat, makes it hard to swallow. And during those times, I often reflect on how I've had many, many months of a pleasant eating experience, a pain-free mouth, and hadn't stopped to notice it. So I always try to pay attention when facing adversity or facing something painful, to appreciate it as a blessing to remind me of all the other times.

But yet, how short-sighted is that? How short-sighted is it to wait for everything to be awful before noticing the things that are good? Friends, we live in the greatest time to be alive in the history of the world. Peace and prosperity increasing on all sides. There has never been a time better than today.

The future is filled with wonderful things. Do you recognize those things? Are you paying attention? Frankly, your life has probably never been better than it is today. Now, certainly, you may be going through a trial. You may be going through a difficult time. But if you were to sit down and make an accurate assessment of your life, I'd bet you that you could come up with a whole long list of reasons and ways that your life is better today than it's ever been before.

Don't miss the opportunity. You have a choice. You can either dwell on the things that you don't like and pay attention to all the things that you think are wrong with your life and with the world, or you can focus on the things that you do like. And wherever you dwell, wherever your focus continues, you'll see more and more of those things.

So I want to encourage you, very practically, this Thanksgiving Day, this Thursday, 2017, do you have a heart filled with gratitude? Do you see the abundance that you're enjoying on all sides? If not, start making a list of reasons to be grateful, to be thankful. If there's something in your life that you don't think is all that great, start looking for the things that are great about it.

Years ago, I remember just two stories. One came from Zig Ziglar, he used to tell a story of a woman that he interacted with. And this woman came up to him at a seminar and she said to him, "I hate my job. Can you help me?" And his advice to her after a little bit of interaction was, "Go home and make a list of everything that you love about your job." She did it and it transformed her working life.

Because when you start focusing on the things that you love, you start to see more and more things to focus on. There's no reason to close your eyes to the things that are hard, the things that are difficult. But it's all a matter of where you focus. Focus on the things that are great.

Another example that Darren Hardy shared one time was with regard to a man that he encouraged to do this in his marriage. A man and his wife were deeply struggling, angry at each other, frustrated at each other. He gave the man the advice to go and to buy a journal and every day to write a journal entry of something that he was thankful for about his wife and to make a gratitude journal.

That practice transformed his marriage. Because instead of looking for everything that was wrong with his wife, he looked for everything that was right with her, everything that was fantastic. And I've applied the same thing in other areas of my life as well and I encourage you. I hope that your list is overflowing.

I hope that you have many blessings in your life for which you can be thankful. If you don't, start making a list. Start counting your blessings and making a list systematically. It has the potential to transform your experience of life. Whatever you focus on grows. Focus on reasons to be thankful, reasons to be grateful.

You'll find more and more reasons to be thankful, more and more reasons to be grateful. Focus on reasons to be miserable. Your destiny is assured. I close this short message to you. I thought it would be interesting to you for me to read President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.

If you know anything about the history of Thanksgiving, it has a few different components in its history from early American history, a few different political movements. As with most things, it's a mixture of myth and fact. But in thinking about Thanksgiving, I pulled up again Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation where prior to 1863, the different states and different parts of the United States celebrated Thanksgiving Day differently on different dates.

And in 1863, almost as a political movement, Abraham Lincoln was trying to use, as any president does, he was trying to use the circumstances of the day to try to build more unity, especially around him and his actions. But I thought that this proclamation, which is pretty short, was really remarkable to read and in many ways it echoes themes that I see repeated in today's world as well.

So without further commentary, I'll just read you this short presidential proclamation from President Lincoln. Washington, DC, October 3, 1863. By the President of the United States of America, a proclamation. The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.

To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theater of military conflict.

While that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union, needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore.

Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things.

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

And testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed, done of the city of Washington the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, 1863, and of the independence of the United States, the 88th, by the President Abraham Lincoln.

If I could, I would invite each and every one of you over to my home this week, and I would serve you the best food that I can make. And I would love to listen to you and hear about the many blessings of your life and share with you the many of mine.

But in the same vein as President Lincoln said those many years ago, since I can't do that, I encourage you, create the tradition in your own home. Fill your home with love and joy and laughter. Prepare the best food that you can. Go and invite every person that you can.

Make your table full. Go and find all of the people who are lonely. Go and find the people who are hungry. Fill your home with everybody that you can find, especially those who are in need. And may you enjoy a Thanksgiving Day filled with a heart truly filled with thanksgiving and gratitude for our many blessings.