What could be your gateway to unconditional happiness and expanded success in your life? It’s actually one of the simplest known methods of feeling more hopeful and creating more lightness in your heart and soul.
It’s free. It’s doable.
Celebrated religious leaders, scientists, philosophers, business and world leaders have touted the benefits as they experience lives of meaning and happiness.
Its value has been written about for thousands of years.
It’s gratitude, and it gets a lot of attention because it’s deserving of notoriety.
Everyone can understand the concept, but when put in context with people’s experiences, it can feel uncomfortable or even distasteful.
Being grateful for certain aspects of life doesn’t diminish challenges or struggles that may be occurring. It’s not intended to avoid feelings of pain or sadness.
It does however, allow you to shift your mental and physiological state when you decide you want that change. When you desire to open yourself up to possibilities and better days.
Done on a regular basis, it becomes increasingly automatic.
Rhonda Byrne, in her book “Magic,” relays how she was “surviving” day to day vs. living, and how her life changed when she began to practice gratitude every day. She says: “As a result of this, everything in my life changed, and the more I practiced gratitude, the more miraculous were the results. My life truly became magical.”
“More than anything else, I felt happier than I thought it was possible to feel. I was blissfully happy – the happiest I had ever been. Gratitude changed me, and my whole life magically changed.”
For some, it’s natural to be grateful and the feeling of gratefulness leads to regular practice, which might not even be recognized as a practice.
For others, who don’t automatically fall into gratitude thinking, a conscious practice can create the feeling on a more regular basis. Either way creates results.
For those of you who lean in easily and often to gratitude thinking, you can share that gift with others. People are probably aware of the difference in the way you show up, they can feel it in your presence.
The question is, are you aware of your power? Are there ways you can more fully embrace and empower your life with this tool, or use it more in service to others?
For those of you for whom gratitude is not first and foremost on your mind, and no practice has been integrated into your life, here are some tips from Carla Sridevi Cohen, founder of “Essential Harmony Healing”:
- It’s so important to be connected to your body, gratitude is felt in the body first as lightness in your heart and unbounded joy.
- When you think grateful thoughts, try to assess where in the body you are feeling a sensation of gratitude. Often, it can be felt between the heart and the throat. Give yourself permission and breathe into that space – you can change the physiology of the tissue.
- If you can’t find anything to be grateful for, try saying: “I forgive myself for pretending I’m not grateful for anything.” See what shifts.
- If deeply challenged, there may be trapped emotions to release (through therapy or healing modalities) or you can allow yourself to feel crappy and hit bottom, to get to a place where you shift on your own. Sometimes that’s what it takes.
- When you work with the body, the mind always switches. We see that with exercise and sometimes eating more green vegetables or healthier food can help.
Gratitude is much more than saying thank you when appropriate. It’s a way of life that expands consciousness and brings about very tangible results in all areas of life.
