The Magic of Gratitude Yields SUPER Power.
Are you happy right now? Is life going the way you want it to go? Truly? It’s OK if it’s not. It might simply be that you’ve forgotten to say Thank You lately. That is all. As simple and as Pollyanna-esque as that sounds, believe me, the weight of those two words when said/felt/expressed with a little heart and soul goes a long way to weaving wonders and turning the most dire of situations around.
How so?
Well, quite simply, gratitude (sincere, heartfelt gratitude, the kind you can literally feel emanating from your being) opens the doors to happiness, well-being and abundance. Which sounds a little flaky on the surface, but when we look a little deeper at the hows and the whys, it is as scientific a claim as it is spiritual. And once we put it into practice, we can see for ourselves that the proof really is in the pudding.
‘Gratitude operates through a Universal law that governs your whole life. According to the law of attraction, which governs all the energy in our Universe, from the formation of an atom to the movement of the planets, “like attracts like”. It’s because of the law of attraction that the cells of every living creature are held together, as well as the substance of every material object. In your life, the law operates on your thoughts and feelings, because they are energy too, and so whatever you think, whatever you feel, you attract to you.’
The Magic, Rhonda Byrne
The civilisations and people of the past knew it.
Oh yes, we like to think of ourselves as intelligently advanced, but emotional intelligence has far more value in this world than mere I.Q. The text hidden within The Emerald Tablet more than hints at this. As did the Ancient Egyptians and the Babylonians, Shakespeare, Beethoven and Einstein. Each of these civilisations and figures knew intrinsically that gratitude is a constantly revolving door. What we give out, we get back. And Sir Isaac Newton proved this to us with physics: Every action has an opposite and equal reaction.
The world’s major religions know it.
From Buddhism to Islam and Judaism to Christianity, giving thanks before receiving that which we have asked for lays the foundation for an abundant life.
Appreciation is a boomerang.
When we radiate it out, it comes back to us in the form of more things to be grateful for. And no subject is unaffected. From our health through to our financial situation, our relationships, lifelong desires and careers, gratitude is the only way to ensure the kind of permanent and steady well-being we not only want, but deserve. When we stop pinching ourselves off from this birthright by replacing our natural state of joy with those non-appreciative flurries of negativity, we find that magically, the universe not only delivers, but delivers in ways we could hardly imagine orchestrating on a human scale.
There are so many ways we can get started…
1: Listing positive aspects about the people who surround us.
Let’s face it, relationships are one of our biggest human hurdles. As a society we are trained early on as children to start detecting flaws in others, and so we grow up with the notion that people are mean/stingy/bullying/irritating and downright unpleasant. Often that’s just the way we refer to our family and friends, never mind complete strangers. Ironically, we are often nicer about them!
So what happens when we start looking at the good points of our tribe? Sometimes we may feel we have to dig around, poke about and really focus to even find one or two… but then boom, momentum builds up and we begin to get good at it. It goes a little something like this.
‘Grrrr, my brother is THE biggest arse known to man.’
‘Okay, not quite THE biggest… there was this time when he remembered my birthday and sent me a card… oh, actually, another year he not only remembered the card but a box of chocolates as well.’
‘We did used to have some really cool times together. Especially when we were kids and we’d go off on bike rides and he’d challenge me to a race.’
‘And he does love his kids. Maybe our relationship has changed but I can SEE he is a good person. His devotion to my nephews is something else…’
‘His taste in clothes is improving too. I really quite dug that green Ralph Lauren sweater (despite the preppy over the shoulders look) that he wore last time we all gathered at Mum and Dad’s.’
See what I mean? Once you get going, the ideas flow. You are summoning them by virtue of your good thoughts about your brother and so the Universe must bring more. It’s law, remember?
Really get stuck into this with your trickiest relationships for 3 or 4 days and then sit back and watch what happens. Your mind will be blown (in a good way). Your relationship will start to soften and transform itself to something quite different. All through the power of being thankful for the parts you LIKE about this person, and bypassing the parts you don’t so much like. You simply create and vibrate a new Point of Attraction so that only the matching facets of the person can now show themselves to you.
2: Counting Blessings
Yes, this is one of those previously irksome sayings which seems to have been handed down like an Old Wife’s tale, but there is method in the mundane… Gratitude naturally multiplies. So think about it – making lists of things to be thankful for and appreciate of makes sense. First and foremost because it truly does warm the cockles and make us feel better. In a crappy situation (an unwanted bodily condition/shoddy bank account/broken down car/after a heated argument), taking a piece of paper and listing the things you are grateful for shifts your vibration. Okay, maybe not all the way up the scale at first. But by reaching for better feeling thoughts in this way, you might move from despair to revenge. Or from hope to mild positivity. It is all of course relevant to where you are right now.
Practice this daily – and first thing is ideal so you have more chance of setting happy wheels in motion for the whole day ahead – and you will see things turn around. First your mood, secondly (in time) the things that manifest in your every day surroundings.
3: Remember when?
Okay, so things may not seem wonderful right now, but in every situation and circumstance, 99.9% of us will be able to recall a time when things regarding that sticky subject were good, often totally fabulous. So go back to that time in the past when you were ‘able to afford’ the Caribbean holiday and designer jeans, when you had a stellar circle of friends, when your career was smooth and enjoyable.
This isn’t to ‘deny’ your current reality, rather to evoke those precise feelings of joy and satisfaction so that you can a) know this is totally achievable again. You did it once, right? And b) to get you back on track as far as feeling better about the subject goes.
As with all gratitude practices, the more ‘work’ (and frankly it could hardly be called that!) you put in – and the more consistently you set a little day dreaming time aside to do it – the better the results.
4: The Quit Complaining Game
Appreciation is the quiet accepting of ‘what is’. This very act in and of itself means we stop the fight against current conditions (‘cos our focus on those will only bring more of them… no matter how persistent they seem) and we naturally start looking for the positives. It is a process, yes. But a daily commitment to looking on the bright side, to making a pact with yourself to stop being part of the moan and groan brigade, to be thankful for even the smallest of things; the sun rising, breakfast on the table, water from the tap, more money in the account on pay day, is a game changer.
Literally!
How many of us take this seemingly run-of-the-mill stuff for granted? But by ‘going general’ and choosing to zoom in on these everyday luxuries and others like them (lest we forget, in many countries that’s precisely what they are), we increase our power to attract those big desires too, yes, undoubtedly.
However, the best gift of all when it comes to everything on the subject of appreciation is this: we really start to realise the absolute truth in the saying that ‘happiness is an inside job’.
There really was never a truer word spoken…
(Note from The Editor: You can buy a copy of The Magic, Rhonda Byrne here:)
