GRATITUDE IS THE KEY FOR OPENING THE DOOR TO THRIVING AND LIVING JOYFULLY, NO MATTER WHAT!!
Gratitude means thankfulness from your soul, acknowledging everything in your life – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
It helps you to…
*Lift your mood and motivate yourself in your day to day life.
**Not just take things for granted and to find joy even during the tougher times.
**Be able to focus even more of your time and energy on habits and choices, setting you up for success.
Let’s navigate through different perspectives of gratitude before we come to the how and why behind all the metamorphosis gratitude brings to our lives.
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RESEARCH SHOWS GRATITUDE HEIGHTENS QUALITY OFL IFE
Two psychologists, Michael McCollough of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis, wrote an article about an experiment they conducted on gratitude and its impact on well-being.
The study split several hundred people into three different groups. All of the participants were asked to keep daily diaries. The first group’s diary was of their days without being told specifically to write about either good or bad things. The second group was told to record their unpleasant experiences. And the last group was instructed to make a daily list of things for which they were grateful.
The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism, and energy. In addition, those in the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress. They were more likely to help others, exercised more regularly, and made greater progress toward achieving personal goals.
Let’s get you the gratitude key by busting some myths!
MYTHS ABOUT WHAT GRATITUDE IS NOT –
* Having gratitude for yourself is selfish
This couldn’t be further from the truth! It is not selfish, it is a way to completely flip the way you have been treating yourself, and to stop the judgment of you. When you have gratitude for you, and all of the parts and pieces of you, it begins to melt the judgment.
If you have gratitude for you, the gift and miracle of you finally becomes apparent to you, and to others, and the world! You are on your way from coping to thriving
A guest from a 21 day gratitude challenge I conducted.
“I rarely think about gratitude TO myself. But I know there have been times through my life where I’ve been grateful for my own nature. And that’s because of how I handled something or that I helped or made a difference where it was needed etc.”
*If you desire more – You’re not grateful
This myth tells us that you can’t be happy with what you have AND want more – if you want more, you must be selfish and ungrateful, right?
**Here is a new reality: **you can be so grateful that you’d be grateful for even more! You can be grateful and still desire more to be grateful.
My tool for this is: “thank you, and more please universe!”
Another comment:
Well THAT’S a challenge! I don’t think I have EVER added that I want more to any gratitude focus. I have only ever limited gratitude to the moment and what has appeared in the moment. This is a new thought to ponder…
*We can be grateful only when we’re not having bad days …
Have you ever had one of those cranky days? Or a day when you are judging the sh** out of yourself?
What’s the first thing that leaves your world? Usually gratitude- for you, your body and your life.
Then the caring that you actually are (the core of you) tends to go away, for yourself and even others, and joy and happiness are out the window.
The antidote for this: Get to the space of gratitude for the thing you are cranky about or the thing you are judging. When the gratitude comes back, so does the happiness and joy, and the space of YOU
* “I will be grateful when…..”
It can be difficult to have gratitude before the things you desire show up. Maybe you’ve said “I’ll be grateful when I have more money” or “I’ll be grateful when that person is nice to me.”
Gratitude is the continuous play of looking for the gifts in life. And if you look for that, that’s what shows up – yes, even when things things get messed up and sh** hits the ceiling.
Gratitude also shifts our **points of view**, which in turn creates our reality. If we are grateful for what we have now, our reality becomes more things that we can be grateful for.
Cool how that works, isn’t it?
The gratitude key opens the doors to your deeper powers that actually give you the strength to rise above the suffering so you can thrive. Here’s how
Gratitude kills judgment
Try this exercise with yourself: I am grateful for myself and my friends, but I was wrong for being angry with them when they went for a movie without even bothering to ask me if I wanted to join them.
Complete and utter gratitude is when you feel the upset, the anger, and yet be thankful for all that was wrong and ugly too. Gratitude is
* not perfection
** not turning the other cheek
*** the strength of being open to the pain and the possibilities that the universe is creating in these difficult moments.
Tough experiences, like the episode I shared as an example above, are in truth, triggers, asking you to step up towards more. Something, you have unconsciously closed and shut yourself up from!!
TINY MOMENTS OF GRATITUDE SPEEDS UP THE PROCESS OF LETTING GO AND BEING OPEN TO WHAT’S NEXT
Our experiences always teach us something. If the experience is “bad”, then the lesson is even more powerful and meaningful. Every unfortunate incident makes us stronger and better equipped to handle new challenges. – Author: Miya Yamanouchi
You see, as you start “BEING” the energy of gratitude, you start living from the idea of possibilities instead of judgements and hopelessness. Stress and defeat can’t take root in your subconscious. Your mind, body and soul know that suffering is not the final reality and
you seek out possibilities even in the harshest moments. You change from this static, automated version of you to a dynamic powerhouse, living joyfully, unapologetically!!
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