The True Story of the 'Ungrateful Bastard' and the Grateful Benefactor

The turning point for Scott Neeson, high powered Hollywood executive, was when he received a call from the agent of one of Hollywood's major stars.  The agent said, "Scott, we have a problem." 'What's up," Scott replied.  The agent answered, "the plane the studio chartered for us doesn't have the right kind of water or the food we require and we are not getting on the plane until this is resolved." Then the 'Star' grabbed the phone and said. "Scott my life is not suppose to be this difficult, Fix it."

That was the moment Hollywood Executive Scott Neeson decided to give up his million dollar job with SONY and began working full-time to save the lives of Cambodian children living and working on the garbage dump in Phnom Penh. So far he has rescued over 1200 children from this horrible existence.   

Source: Reader's Digest, September, 2012, Page 181

When I read this story I was appalled by the lack of gratitude the Hollywood star had. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized, it wasn't the star's fault he had such an ungrateful attitude.  You see he was brought up in an environment, as we all were, where being disenchanted (ungrateful) with what we have was deliberately  programmed into us by the free enterprise society so we would buy more (want more) and complain when we didn't have what we wanted. Unfortunately this programming has poisoned every aspect of our lives from our health to our relationship with others.

Today, the lack of gratitude for what we have is the source of many of our problems in society. You see, the more ungrateful we are, the more unhappy we become and the more we talk and behave in ways that would not make our mother's proud.. 

The virtue of gratitude is the most unappreciated and underrated of all virtues. Gratitude, properly understood, is so powerful that being grateful for what has gone wrong in our lives has the power to make it turn out right. That's how powerful gratitude is... To learn more about the spectacular power of gratitude, sign up for my free gratitude messages.  They are unconditionally free which means you will never receive an email from me asking you to buy any product or service from me.

I offer my gratitude messages and what I have learned about the power of gratitude to people, free of charge, out of a deep appreciation for what the practice of gratitude has given back to me..



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