This is one of my favourite stories - it is designed to be told on a Thursday evening so as to remind us all to be grateful - for by being grateful, you have more resons to be more grateful.

Once upon a time not so long ago, there lived a woodcutter whose name was Ahmed. The old man was a widower and he lived with his daughter, Samira, in a small hut in the forest.

He used to go every day to chop branches from the trees, cut the branches up, gather the sticks together and take them back home. Then, in the afternoon, he'd have a bite to eat and take the sticks to the nearby market town, where he'd sell them for firewood and buy some food for himself and for his daughter.

One evening, they'd just settled down to eat their meal when Samira said: 'Father, I sometimes wish that we could have different kinds of food to eat .'

The old man thought about this and so the following morning he got up much earlier than he usually would and he went deeper into the mountains where there were more trees. Ahmed worked long and hard sawing wood and bundling it up, and he collected far more than usual. And when he'd done, the old man carried the heavy bundle back home on his shoulders and left it round the back of the hut, ready to take to market.

Once Upon a Time...A water bearer in China had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it. The other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots of water to his house.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After 2 years of what was perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."

The bearer said to the pot, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

The following exercise provides a useful insight into our own mythologies, what we are and how we represent ourselves to ourselves and the world around us. You may also wish to do the following exercise:

• Take a clean piece of paper and draw a horizontal line on the page. The start of the line is your birth, the end of the line is your death
• (b)|---------X------------------------|(d)
• Mark with an ‘X’ on the line where you are now
• Write down 10 (or more if you like) experiences have characterised your life up until the ‘X’
• Write down 10 (or more if you like) incidents that you wish to characterise your life between ‘X’ and the end
• Can you change the way you speak and think of these experiences? Notice what happens and how you feel about yourself when you start to change the experiences that have and will characterise your life.
• The last point is probably the most interesting one. Many people will start to argue that they cannot determine the things that will happen to them. If you are one of these people, ask yourself what circumstances in your life have led you to think this way?