am the youngest of three children. My mother and her mother and her mother’s mother were all Texas women. My father and his family have been in America from as far back as the formation of the original colonies, with enough various Europeans marrying into the family to make me a typical American mixed-grill girl. My mother was a superb housekeeper and cook, and my father, after a few years in the State Congress fighting for family rights and the little guy, settled into the practice of law in Dallas.

I was born in the last years of the boomer generation. My parents, like many couples in the post war era, gave to their children all the things they never had growing up during the Depression. That amounted to a lot of things. Love and some important life-lessons, coupled with travel, music and theater studies rounded out my childhood. As soon as I could drive, I spent my summers and time after school working for an interior designer. I went to college and majored in what seemed like truly practical subjects for getting a high-paying, secure job (not!)– art history and anthropology. After spending a year in London completing further studies in art history and decorative arts at Sotheby’s, I returned home and looked for a job. With no offers forthcoming, I started my own business specializing in art consulting and interior design. I returned to school for my Master’s degree in art history, still hoping for that lucrative, recession-proof employment opportunity. I received offers to teach, so I worked as an interior designer by day and taught art history and decorative arts at night. Beautiful objects surrounded me, literally night and day. Some of them came to live at my house. Yet, no matter how excited I was about the new lamp or antique rug I acquired, the thrill did not last long. There had to be more to life than pretty things.

One afternoon I visited the mother of a childhood friend. I sought her out because throughout the years I had seen books in her home, books on topics foreign to me: books about yoga and Eastern religions and karma. That day I learned how to meditate and went to the bookstore with a list. In the almost three decades since then, I have read and studied the writings of many of the ancient and modern religions and wisdom traditions. I have filled my shelves with the works by the great teachers and I have had the honor of meeting and talking with some of them.

When I reached the twenty-year mark of working in the interior design world I knew my career there was complete. My motto in life has always been, “If it isn’t fun, don’t do it,” and interior design was no longer fun. I retired, closed my office and devoted my full attention to my spiritual studies. As I read new works and re-read older ones, I began to recognize some key concepts, some universal beliefs that were expressed by all people across the world and throughout time. The foundation for these various world-views, one key idea that held up the others was the notion of being grateful and expressing thanks, to the universe and to our fellow humans. And so I began to study gratitude as it is defined and understood in the religious, spiritual and wisdom traditions created by man. I learned about the power gratitude has to change lives. Everyday I experience a life filled with more happiness and less emptiness and desolation. Bushel baskets of blessings keep dropping into my life. I long ago set aside some time each day to list the things that are going right and say thank you for them. It’s a great way to lift my spirits when I am down and reorient my world view to see how fortunate I am. I use my Lysa Rohan Gratitude Meditation^SM. It is an effective way to focus on the good things the universe continually tosses my way. I am presently gathering gratitude and other spiritual teachings and writing a book, one anchored in the truth that gratitude is the attitude for a joy-filled life. Stay tuned for further developments.

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