2) If you are reasonable healthy and can do many of the activities you enjoy. People everywhere are battling debilitating, often painful, potentially life ending diseases. If you don’t have cancer, if you aren’t suffering from severe diabetes, liver failure or a weak heart, nor living with some other horrific disease or injury, thank God.

3) If you can read. There are two billion people who don’t know how to read. In India alone, 400 million people are illiterate! Reading offers you the wisdom of the ages, informs you of today’s vital issues, entertains you and it stimulates your imagination.

4) If you live in a nice home, have plenty of fresh food, clean water and reliable electricity. Two billion people live on less than $2 a day. Most have no toilet, no running water or other facilities taken for granted in richer parts of the world.

5) If you can attend a religious or political gathering without fear of being harassed, arrested, or even tortured or possibly put to death. You are better off than most of mankind throughout history.

6) If you live in a nation run by rule of law rather than by an authoritarian ruler, and you have the right to select your political leaders and law makers and you have judicial protection. You live in a society that is the envy of the world.

In many African nations, those accused of serious crimes often live like Lackson Sikayenera in Malawi. He’s been imprisoned since 1999 and their justice system lost his case file which means he may never have a trial.

Meanwhile, he lives on one meal a day and is packed so tightly in a stench filled disease ridden cell for 14 hours a day he can hardly move. Sikayenera drinks filthy water and uses a foul toilet. (New York Times, 11/6/05)

7) If you or a loved one is not at war or facing the imminent threat of war or violence. I know a man whose son is a soldier stationed in Iraq. This man lives in constant fear of a military person coming to his door with heart sickening news.

8) If you can pursue the career of your choice, not limited by illness or physical limitation or the prejudice or tradition of your society. Yet there are those who face some of those problems and still succeed at the careers they choose.

9) If you have money available to make charitable donations. There are vast numbers of people who don’t know where their next meal is coming from, including people near you.

10) If you have hugs to share, your time to give and kindness to offer. For you could provide the world with something it desperately needs: Your Blessings. By sharing some of the Blessings bestowed upon you, you can make your world a little nicer and your life a little happier.

Success Tip of the Week: Please take from this list whatever Blessings apply to you, add to it and keep it as a reminder of how fortunate you really are and how meaningful your life truly is.

In the next KazanToday, The remarkable story of one of history’s biggest business blunders and how it led to one of history’s greatest business successes.