There was this woman I knew. She was very wealthy, and she had the perfect life. On paper, and from the outside looking in, everyone would say that’s the American dream.

But this person was never happy. She was always focused on the negative. If she went to a five-star hotel, she would change rooms three or four times — because the wallpaper might have been peeling a little, or there was a smell outside the room, or any other small thing — instead of noticing all the beautiful marble and gold around her.

That’s what happens when we live in extreme craving, in extreme expectations, where we demand everything be at an unrealistic level of quality.

This was someone who didn’t like flowers because they die. Didn’t like candy because it makes you fat. These were things we’d realize when trying to buy gifts for her.

She didn’t like the winters, so she’d stay in her room all winter. But then she wouldn’t come out in the summer either, because she didn’t really want to be outside. She didn’t want to enjoy her blessings. She was drained by negative energy, inner complaining and outer complaining. And that is very common. We see it all the time.

You might be at a restaurant with someone, and you notice they always send the food back because it’s cold. Something is always not quite right about wherever they are. And this is very exhausting. It’s not a peaceful, pleasant way to live. Someone with a little bit of gratitude and a lot less stuff would be a lot happier.

So, it becomes a practice to just be present with our surroundings, so we can notice the blessings we have. To be present with our thoughts, so we can recognize when they are complaining, negative, and draining. And then, we can just breathe and let those thoughts go. Let that tension in our body go.

And at first, maybe for just a brief moment here and there, we can have a moment where we’re simply present, just seeing with fresh eyes everything around us.

We never want to get conditioned into expecting everything to be perfect all the time, because that’s not a great way to live.

We think we see the world as it is, but we actually see the world as we interpret it to be. And that interpretation is everything.

If we see a picture in the newspaper of a woman crying in front of a burned house, and the caption says, “Woman saved by neighbor,” then we understand this is a happy moment. It’s a story of survival. But if we see the same photo with the caption, “Woman loses house,” then those same tears feel like tears of tragedy, and we feel immense suffering for her.

And this subtle shift in how we see the world is everything. It is the difference between living in a gray, dark, stormy world, or realizing there’s a rainbow peeking out at the end. It’s the difference between whether we see the good in the world or whether we only see the bad. And the fact of the matter is, we live in a world with both: infinite good, and infinite things we might wish were slightly different.

But we all have the choice of where we put our attention. We all have the choice of what we look at, what we focus on, and what we think about. And if we are grateful, we are looking at the flowers. We are looking at the butterflies and the beautiful sounds and smells all around us.

But if we are ungrateful — always thinking about what we don’t have and what others have that we want — we will never see the blessings in our lives. We will never see the bright colors in this world. We won’t even know that flowers smell beautiful, because we’ll never stop to take a moment to smell them.

So we really have to understand that gratitude isn’t the cause of happiness, it’s the byproduct of happiness.

When we are fully present in our surroundings and not lost in our heads, we see the beauty all around us. We see the blessings. But when we’re always lost in thought, always worrying and thinking, we wouldn’t even notice the cutest puppy trying to jump up and play with us.

The more we practice presence, the more gratitude we feel. And the more gratitude we feel, the brighter and more beautiful our lives become.