The most important aspect of creating the life and reality you wish (therefore are destined) to experience, is to obtain a real and genuine understanding of what gratitude is. Gratitude is a simple ‘thank you’ or smile given to someone who holds a door for you or does some other small favor. Small acts of kindness and appreciate are important, but the aspect of gratitude I wish to draw you towards exists within the very essence of who you are. It is a deep connection and appreciation for all you have in this moment, without a thought about what you perceive you don’t have. If you only allow yourself to notice how much you do have, you cannot help but to attract more to yourself. Feeling a genuine sense of gratitude tells the Universe you are well blessed and you are open to receiving all gifts the Universe wishes to bestow upon you. The more grateful you feel, the more loving you naturally become. And, with elevating yourself to a continuous state of love, further enlightenment naturally unfolds within you.
Allow yourself to open up to feeling a sense of appreciation and honor for everything that ignites happiness within you. Happiness is a frequency. Experiencing happiness invokes more happiness. You will realize that just by finding gratitude in what you’ve been blessed with will literally change your entire reality. Gratitude is just the first step, but it is a quit powerful one. It creates so many outlets of possibility, happiness and surprises you had previously kept yourself closed from receiving. No matter what your situation is, you can create a list of at least ten things you have to be grateful for. The more you practice seeking out what you are grateful for, the more you open yourself to see the beauty and majesty that is woven into the reality of all things. There are many blessings you experience every day as common practice and you don’t even realize they are blessings and gifts.
When you get into the shower in the morning, feel thankful that you can have a hot shower. Really enjoy how nice the hot water feels on your skin. Think about your clean towel and that you can have a hot shower in privacy. This is a luxury you are gifted every day. Aside from that, someone else built your shower, and a hot water heater heats the water for your shower. Someone had to create the water system that brings water to your house/apartment, so all you have to do is turn on a faucet. Think of all the products you use in the shower and after the shower. Feel a great sense of appreciation that you have all of these products to cleanse yourself, but also find honor and appreciation for the product itself. Be thankful you have a toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash to keep your teeth healthy and clean. Consider the bed you sleep in each night, even if you are living in someone else’s home. Be grateful you have a safe place to rest your head and that you have a bed to sleep in that is warm. Every meal you consume is a gift. Whether is a plant based or animal based food product, it has sacrificed its life to sustain your life. Feel honor and gratitude for this gift. No matter what you are eating, it is a gift because it is sustaining your ability to live and experience life.
Clean clothes, transportation, central heating and being able to just go through a drive-thru to buy a meal are all luxuries. One hundred years ago no one experienced life with the luxuries we do today. Most of the world does not experience a lot of the luxuries that anyone reading this does. Also consider you were born into a free country, where you are free to do things you love and you do not have to grow your own food to eat. Though, growing a garden and being self sufficient is important, you were born in a country where you are blessed enough to not have to worry about basic survival needs. You need food, you go to the store. Start focusing on these things and you will uncover many blessings that you had previously overlooked. When every moment you experience is perceived as a blessed gift, there is no room for unhappiness or feelings of lack. This leads to feelings of abundance. Abundance attracts abundance. I don’t just mean on a physical and material level, but true abundance that flowers from within. This is ignited by finding gratitude for everything that is currently in your reality, in this moment.
Gratitude isn’t just for your material comforts, or having your survival needs met for you. Gratitude also needs to be focused on all relationships in your life. Whether the relationship is challenging, or flows in harmony, both are gifts. They only offer different experiences. Situations or people are only experiences to help awaken us and help grow us. We tend to feel defeated by situations and people that leave us feeling less than wonderful. Anytime you feel you have been deceived, used, cheated on or taken advantage of, you have the option to view yourself as a victim, or choose to view the situation as a learning tool. What hurts you, release back to the Universe with gratitude because it taught you something. You choose whether people and situations tear you down, or teach you and make you stronger. You choose how long you give any person or situation energy, focus and thought. Within every wound, there is a beautiful lesson and gift. There is an opportunity to grow yourself and expand beyond the current boundaries of how you experience life. What challenges us is what brings us to our own attention. Instead of thinking “Why did this happen to me” consider the thought “what is this trying to teach me”. Everything you experience was created by your own imagination. Find gratitude for your current experiences, and focus your energy solely on creating the experiences you really desire.
Gratitude is an ethereal fire that feeds your soul with a frequency that can only expand you. Feel gratitude for the food you consume. Consider that everything that exists within creation is a form of energy. You consume this energy in an organic manner to sustain your physical existence when you eat anything. Without food, you could not live. Without the warmth and energy from the Sun, you could not live. Without the protective atmosphere of the Earth (Gaia) you could not live. Without water from the Rain, you could not live. Fill your heart with gratitude that all of these energy sources are infinitely available to you, to support your physical existence every day. There is so much to be grateful for in every breath. Do you feel grateful upon waking in the morning? Do you feel blessed that you have another day to experience life? Do you view your job as gift and acknowledge all of the aspects of your life it sustains and provides for you? The more you choose to focus your energy on being grateful for all you have, down to having toilet paper, being able to watch a butterfly flutter about, feeling the warm Sun on your face, the more fuel you add to the ethereal flame that exists within you.
Look inward and discover what it is you really wish for. Allow your entire being to be engulfed in gratitude for anything and everything you can imagine. The more energy and focus you put into it the faster you will begin to alter your perception, and begin to create anew. Allow every beautiful surprise that unfolds in your life to add to the things you are grateful for. Allow every challenge or obstacle to add to the things you are grateful for, not because it hurt you, but because it helped grow you. Though making lists of what you are grateful for can be beneficial, I believe all you really need to do is put an honest conscious effort into focusing your thoughts, energy and emotions on what you are grateful for each day. Think about it as often as you wish. Find a way to feel gratitude that is comfortable to you. Create your own personal word for giving thanks. It can also serve as an acknowledgement to the Universe when you feel the tingle of gratitude overflowing within. Seeing the world through the eyes of gratitude will illuminate a shade of beautiful you’ve never experienced before. It’s your choice to focus your energy in a positive way upon all the things you do have, discarding what you feel is lacking and making you feel incomplete.
Feeling gracious and content with your situation doesn’t mean you don’t hold big dreams in your heart and you stop trying to achieve your goals. Having gratitude is the wind that carries you towards achieving your dreams. To get where you want to go you must have an awareness and appreciation for where you currently are, and how you got there. Life unfolds in the direction of your observation, so observe through gratitude. If it is something you don’t often think about it may take some effort when you first try. I can honestly say when I made a choice to give gratitude where it was due it felt like a full time job. I had to constantly remind myself to be happy and grateful for everything. I didn’t have a job or money at the time. Anytime I’d find loose change around the house or outside somewhere, I’d feel excited and grateful as if it were $100 I just stumbled upon opposed to it really being a penny or a quarter. This gratitude and excitement eventually led to several job offers and many random sources of money making their way into my life. This set the stage to creating a new life that I am absolutely in love with today.
The gratitude, appreciate and honor I allowed to flow through me created many positive outlets of possibility to change my situation into what I truly wanted it to be. In the moments I had very few physical possessions, along with no car or job, I felt the happiest and most grateful I’d ever been. There was something quite freeing to having no obligations or possessions to weigh me down. I had always thought of myself as a thoughtful and appreciative person, in fact, most people would have described me as such. My problem was that I was always looking at what I didn’t have and thinking negatively about my life and myself because I didn’t have honest appreciation in my heart. When it came to the point where I had almost nothing and nothing but time on my hands, I fell in love with just being alive. I discovered a level of gratitude and honor for all of life and creation. Sometimes you do need to shed every part of yourself to expand into the best possible you.
After I started my new job I wrote ‘Thank you for this money’ on the back of my first paycheck, and continued on every paycheck thereafter. I’d also write blessings on the back of money in anticipation of those who would encounter my bill after I spent it. I made it a point to always be thankful for every meal and I would enjoy it as if I were eating at a fine restaurant. I was grateful for having a safe home (I actually lived with someone at the time) and that I had a warm bed every night to sleep in. No matter how oppressive my living conditions felt at times, I would find gratitude for the fact that I did have a home. I had a hot shower and hot coffee every morning when I didn’t have a job. Within two months of getting a job, I was able to move into my own place, with pretty much everything I needed to feel comfortable and abundant. It all literally just came to me for free or through amazing bargains. I had put an amazing amount of energy each day into feeling grateful for anything and everything. I would feel honor to the Sun for giving me life. I would think about people who have really hard jobs, working in harsh conditions and I felt an overwhelming sense of respect, honor and gratitude for all of the hard workers in the world. I didn’t focus on being grateful for my comforts in my personal awareness only, I thought about the bigger picture.
You can change your entire life just by utilizing this one Key. Aside from the beautiful color conscious gratitude brings into your awareness, it also makes you feel amazing within. When you allow yourself to be content with all you have, without a thought of what you perceive you don’t have, you fill full within. Your ethereal fire blazes and you pull a new frequency of awareness into your reality. You create new possibilities for yourself and you open your heart to receiving. Discover your own way of experiencing and expressing gratitude. Though, you need to recognize when trying to incorporate a new practice into your current and comfortable thought and life patterns, you will experience some resistance from within. Give yourself time to adjust to focusing on what you do have and feeling gratitude for that. Changing old thought processes takes effort and discipline. If it is your will to open yourself to the new, it will be. Gratitude is a layer that should be incorporated into everything you wish to create for yourself. Gratitude is a Key that unlocks your heart on many levels, and allows you to receive.
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