Around this time of year, when our country takes a day to offer thanks, the word gratitude gets tossed around quite a bit. But did you know that gratitude is one of your most precious super powers, that if practiced daily, will assist you in creating an incredibly abundant and deeply fulfilling life?
The thing that we must first understand is that like everything else in the universe, we each have a vibrational resonance that serves as a magnet drawing people, experiences, and inspirations of matching frequency directly to us. With gratitude being the root of all abundance, by practicing gratitude, we raise our vibrational frequency, resulting in increased energy, creativity, optimism, patience, connectivity, and even increased immune function.
You may be thinking, this is great and all, but life is hard! There are debts to pay, congested commutes to endure, illnesses, and exasperating relationships to manage. Sure, I'd be grateful if I had it easy like other people, but my life is hard. I have sincere compassion for those struggling in painful situations, but I promise you that regardless of where you are in your life, YOU have the power to change it if you start practicing gratitude. It's simply about shifting your perspective from "a problem" mentality to "a possibility" mindset.
Within each issue or problem, there's always something to be grateful for, even if it's simply to be alive. I know in trying situations this may not sound comforting, but when I finally understood that the simplest complaint -- even about the weather -- is a rejection of the present moment and knocks my vibration down a few notches, I realized how much control I actually do have over my life.
I've always had a lot to be grateful for, but I haven't always been a grateful person. There could've been 10 wonderful things to recognize and my corrupted mind would pick out the one thing that needed fixing. I told myself that I was an optimist and just saw how great it all would be if I could somehow mend that that one thing. However, when that one thing did get better, there'd be another thing, and then another thing after that. It's not that I was a bad person -- I just didn't have the information that I have now. When we aren't grateful for the things we have, they are absent from our future creations. On an energy level, it's as if we're rejecting them, so why would they stick around?
While I lost many things in my life because I didn't have sincere gratitude, I used it as an opportunity to seek new information and begin a new chapter of my life. We have an opportunity for rebirth and renewal at our fingertips. I started small and focused on being more mindful of all the things I appreciate in life. I start my mornings and and finish my days laying in bed, reciting in my mind all that I'm grateful for: the air that I breathe, my cozy comforter, my sanctuary home, my able body, the loving licks from my dog, the passion to create, prosperity, the raindrops on my window washing the city clean. Nothing is too small or insignificant to honor with a momentary nod of gratitude.
These small shifts in thinking are extremely powerful and once you begin practicing gratitude, more gratitude will begin to sprout up, like bamboo shoots in a Japanese forest, in all areas of your life. I began my gratitude practice a few years ago, and now organic inspirations of gratitude pop into my mind continually throughout the day. I no longer see the world as a competitive game of scarcity, but rather a place of abundance and wonder. I've attracted many new wonderful friends and opportunities now that my magnetic charge is singing a different tune. While most of us don't grow up understanding that the energies we don't see are far more powerful than the ones we do see, those who've tapped into this invisible force of gratitude are delighting in the magic of life.