I used to be one of those people who would read about the powers of gratitude and took it to mean that I should be grateful for what little I do have and learn to love it. Basically, to settle rather than wish or dream for anything bigger and so it never appealed to me.
It wasn't until I finally understood the quickly transforming power of gratitude and its relation to the law of attraction that I began to practice it myself. I witnessed my life shift drastically within three months.
In this article, I'm going to discuss what gratitude is, why it's so extremely powerful, and how you can begin practicing gratitude starting today.
What does gratitude mean?
Gratitude is simply being aware of what you have and what is going well in your experience.
To be grateful is to acknowledge on a consistent basis all the good in your life and truly feel its presence in your life. Most people focus on what they're lacking, and therefore attract more lack.
When you're in a state of gratitude, your focus on loving what you have attracts MORE things to love. Like attracts like. Are you attracting more lack or more things to love in your life? This is the true power of gratitude.
3 ways gratitude will transform your life
Before I tell you how to practice gratitude, I'm going to share how gratitude works. And boy, does it work.
My husband had lost his job and I was pregnant with our second baby. We had no income for 3 months and it was during that time that I began practicing gratitude and visualization for just 5-10 minutes a night after watching the documentary The Secret.
Long story short, within 3 months my husband was hired for a job completely out of his field, making twice as much and literally working half the amount of time. If you know us in real life, you know I'm not lying and that he's home all the dang time.
We simply don't live the financial life we used to and I know without a doubt it was the gratitude and visualizing every night that changed my reality.
Here's 3 ways gratitude works to transform your life in a short amount of time.
1. You notice what you do have
How often do we take for granted all the good things we already have?
Our health, the health of our children, the roof over our heads, a cold fridge to keep our food from spoiling, a warm bed to sleep in every night, access to clean drinking water–the list could go on.
We whine and complain about things while enjoying all of these luxuries. Try going one day without any of the above and see how insignificant your current complaints may be. I mean, isn't it amazing to have all of those things?
When we fail to notice what we do have, we don't align ourselves with receiving more. Having a lack mindset, where we just constantly feel like we don't have enough and complain all the time, actually only sets us up to attract more circumstances that make us feel like we don't have enough.
We have to see the good already around us before we can allow more good into our realities.
2. Your vibrational energy is shifted big time
There is positive energy and there is negative energy. Positive things (positive experiences, situations, circumstances, feelings like joy, love, freedom) vibrate at higher levels, while negative things vibrate at lower levels. Human are constantly vibrating at a certain level too because we are energy.
When we are feeling grateful, happy, hopeful or peaceful, we're vibrating at a higher level, meaning we're a match for other good things that are also vibrating at high levels.
When we're complaining, gossiping, arguing, playing the role of victims–we're vibrating at lower levels and thus we're a match for other negative things that are also vibrating at those levels.
When you take time to think about all the things you're grateful for, it will naturally increase the level of your vibrational energy, which in turn will attract more good things into your experience.
We cannot attract amazing things if we're constantly vibrating at a low level. Like attracts like. Joy attracts more joy, anger attracts more anger. Lack attracts more lack.
The more we complain, the more things we attract into our lives to complain about. The more we are grateful, the more things we attract into our lives to be grateful about.
3. You open yourself up to receive more
Once you're feeling grateful and your vibrational level has increased, you are now in the same "funnel of energy", if you will, as other positive things, which means you're able to receive them. You actually become a magnet for them. (Same thing if you're vibrating at a low level–you're a magnet for more negative experiences and feelings, i.e. "when it rains, it pours").
When we're thinking thoughts and looking around our physical realities, observing what we like and don't like, we're basically putting an order in to the Universe to receive more of the same.
What we focus on expands, good or bad.
The more emotion you feel while thinking of things you're grateful for (or things you're not), the faster the essence of what you're focusing on will show up again and again in your experience. Emotions manifest things faster, good or bad.
Being grateful daily is not only beneficial in raising your vibrational energy/your mood/your mindset, but it's putting an order into the Universe saying "Thank you! I love this! Please send me more!"
How to practice gratitude
Practicing gratitude is extremely simple, although if you're used to complaining, feeling like a victim and/or noticing all that's wrong in your world, it might take some getting used to.
But I'm here to let you know that I was that person, and I was able to begin easily practicing gratitude for a few minutes a day and I'm still in awe 7 years later by what happened in those following months.
Here's what I did: I simply thought of 10 things every night that I was grateful for.
At the time, I was receiving food stamps because my husband had lost his job, and I was pregnant with our second baby. It was not the greatest moment in my life by far. I could've complained and feared the worst every night before falling asleep, but instead I did the opposite.
I would feel grateful for things like:
- food stamps to buy food for my toddler
- my warm bed
- family that was helping us
- my healthy toddler
- my health and the health of my husband
- our car that got us around
- the internet to find jobs and submit resumes easily
- mindset books that kept my faith high
- the existence of the law of attraction
- my overall safety in this world
Sometimes I'd fall asleep with tears of gratitude in my eyes. Tears of gratitude instead of tears of fear, worry or doubt.
We all have a very important choice to make every day: to focus on the good, which allows abundance to flow, or focus on the scary stuff, which blocks our abundance from showing up.
Your abundance in all things is always available to you. The only thing stopping it is your divine and holy focus. Focus on the good, and you will open the floodgates.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this article. For spiritual self-care tips every Sunday afternoon, you can sign up for the Dwell in Magic weekly newsletter.
If you’d like more real life examples of daily spiritual self-care, you can connect with me on Instagram.
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Lots of love,
Jessica
Jessica Dimas is the author of Anything Can Be: A Reference Guide for Applying the Law of Attraction. Connect with her on Facebook and Instagram for more inspiration and updates.
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