This idea of gratitude seems to be all around these days. There is a real movement to recognize and give thanks for some number of things each day. I believe it is one of the most powerful things you can do today, especially in the morning and especially in the moment or as close to it as you can. I no longer make a specific list, although it certainly helps to do that until you are in the habit. Once you are in the habit, it becomes second nature in many ways. I now move to see the good in everything. Because there is good in everything. It is all about the meaning we assign to it. I get better at it all the time because I practice getting better at it all the time. Starting the day with gratitude sets you up with the right attitude starting out and you are more likely to continue your day on a high(er) note.
Our programming from childhood tends to color everything in our lives, particularly if we are not conscious to it. Gratitude helps to set your mind on things above. To welcome and vibrate with what you would like more of is just smart. It is a way of habitually thinking that can change your entire perspective and even if circumstances don’t change, which they will, then you are still living in peace and joy. Yes, gratitude is that powerful if applied consistently.
When we allow our fear brain to see all the danger and bad in everything and keep us on high alert to those things, focused on them, then guess what? You get more of that. I think that is a natural law that works in two ways. Number one, when you give your subconscious a suggestion or belief, then it will hit on that whenever it sees it again. Your brain is constantly filtering through millions of data inputs every second. Our conscious minds cannot process all of that at once so the subconscious only serves up a small portion of those inputs for us at a time. It filters all the rest. So you see, if you start consciously looking for the good and giving thanks for it, the subconscious says ok let’s deliver more of this because this is relevant.
The second way is the highly touted and, in some circles controversial, Law of Attraction. There is science around the Law of Attraction and it seems to make sense but further, empirically I think we can all find evidence of it working in our lives. This is that what we think on, we will attract. So this is saying we actually draw these things into our lives energetically (where above you are really just noticing what is already there) because of the energy of our thoughts. So I actually receive something I had been thinking about, like a new contract or a cold or whatever it may be.
Some would say that these are really the same thing and perhaps they are. They definitely are a percentage of the time. We want something. We think about that thing. We then believe we will have it and so we start doing the actions to get it. We continue to learn about it and the subconscious and conscious goes to work figuring out how to bring it about, which brings more and better actions and steps toward getting it. And ultimately, it happens.
But I believe there is another layer of this that we don’t fully understand in which miracles happen. The more those miracles are acknowledged and received in gratitude, they happen more and more frequently. Try noticing the small miracles and giving thanks for them. See what happens.
