“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~Marcus Aurelius

Gratitude may be one of the most powerful creation tools in existence. It is so easy to get caught in the mundane stir of our hectic lives. And as we have learned in the previous blog, our brains are set up to absorb negative experiences and harp on the negative in our lives in an ignorant attempt to protect us. This primordial faculty of the brain makes it harder for us to appreciate what we have in life. Think of when you were going through a tough time and someone pointed out the good things in your life: you may have shrugged it off as not as important as the negative experience you were dealing with, or perhaps you just passively recognized it and then brought your full attention back to the negative experience. This is what most of us do in our daily lives. We have so much to be grateful for in our lives. And the fact is that by focusing on the positive in our lives we will attract more positive into our lives. Our entire world is a result of our thoughts, what we choose to focus on: so when we are grateful we open the gates for more opportunities to be grateful again. The great 13th-century German philosopher, mystic, and theologian Meister Eckhart told us, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

Gratitude is the open door to abundance. When we learn to appreciate the things we do have in our lives, we are inviting more of that into our lives. Conversely, the same is true for when we harp on the negative: we invite more negative into our lives. Put simply, we are meditating all the time. When we become angry, for example, we are masters of single-pointed meditation: nothing can take our minds from the experience or person who angered us. And thus, that meditation enforces the habit for anger and creates more opportunities for anger to arise in our lives. The same is true for all negativity in our lives. By allowing the power of gratitude to be a daily part of our lives we begin to shift our attention and change our lives dramatically.

There are many ways to cultivate the habit of gratitude and appreciation in our lives, a gratitude journal is a great way to do this. I found this a great way to shift my focus to one of gratitude. Every night before I went to bed I would write five things I was grateful for and just be with them for a moment. Sometimes I will just lie there before drifting off to sleep and think about what I am grateful for in my life. You will feel the higher vibrations of joy and gratitude well up within you when you practice this. We can do this all day long, training the mind to shift perspective from the negative poor-me mind that closes the door to the abundance we seek, to the grateful mind that opens the gate wide for positive opportunity to flow in.

A great habit to acquire is every morning just as you wake up tell yourself, “I love my life!” This invites the energy of gratitude, love, and joy into your day. Will you have bad days? Of course you will. Will you sometimes say this and it will seemed forced? Yes, it will. But the key is on those days to really bring to mind all you are grateful for. Just the fact that you woke up is amazing. A great number of people who were alive yesterday did not wake up today, and statistically more young people die per day then elders. You never know when it will be your last day, so appreciate this day. I don’t say this to scare you. I point it out to show you how fortunate we are simply to be alive and able to experience all the wonders that life has to offer. When you begin and end your day with appreciation, you foster that energy to grow in your life.

Gratitude is one of the highest vibrations of energy, up there with love and joy, so you will be attuning yourself with that high vibration of energy as opposed to the lower vibrations of negativity.

Gratitude is not just something to be reserved for the good things in your life. We can be grateful for tough times as well, knowing they are opportunities for us to learn and grow. Remember that good and bad are just perceptions of mind, and we can approach both with the attitude of gratitude. We learn from everything in our lives—our mistakes and seeming negative experiences—and so we can learn to appreciate the ups and downs. What you will find happening is that the more you use the power of gratitude, this positive mind will attract more positive people and situations into your life. It’s just the natural order of vibration: when you align yourself with lower vibrations of worry and negativity, you will attract more of it. And when you align yourself with the higher vibrations of gratitude and surrender, well, you see where we are going with this. Every day you have the choice to focus your mind on what you wish to experience today. You and you alone hold the awesome power to turn it all around, right at this very moment. Change your habits and truly become the conscious creator of your life.

The first step is to become mindful of what you are doing and thinking in each moment. Then shift your mind to gratitude. If you are having a difficult time feeling grateful in that moment, then try writing for five or ten minutes about the things and people you are grateful for. Try not to let your mind get hijacked and convinced by negativity. Just open your heart and mind and allow yourself to surrender to the flow of gratitude. The more you familiarize your mind with the habit of gratitude, the more you will naturally be grateful for everything in your life, and the natural flow of abundance will follow in all of its wonderful forms.

Gratitude is an abundant mind. One who has a mind of abundance truly does not need anything externally to fulfill them. I have recently been living my life in simplicity, in fact the most simple I have ever lived, yet I am the happiest I have ever been in my entire life because I am grateful for all that I have. The irony is that the external things will just start to manifest naturally because as you become content and happy, you realize that you don’t really need anything. And the key to having everything is to not want anything. I am not saying external things are wrong to desire, but when you have the lack-infused mind of wanting, you only create more lack and want, because that is what you ignorantly focus on: the lack, the want. When you fill your mind with the joy of gratitude, you live as though you have all that you need. And all that you need will effortlessly show up in your life.

Check out “Small Steps to Giant Leaps” where this blog was drawn from.

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