Whoever has gratitude will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have gratitude, even what they have will be taken from them.
Do you remember when you were young and you had a big imagination? Everything we think of now as make-believe was real then in our minds and eyes. I remember playing with my stuffed animals and toys and they pretty much came to life in my mind. I believed in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and that there was a magical other world behind my mirror, and hiding in between the clothing racks at the department stores turned into my own little fort. I'm sure a lot of you had great imaginations too. I'd say pretty much every kid does. As kids, we think of something in our mind and it happens. It becomes real. It's like magic.
Then somewhere along the path of growing up, for the majority of us, we lose our sense of imagination. We're soon too old and we stop playing with our make-believe toys. We grow up and between responsibilities, stress and other things, our imaginations and the "magic" of the smallest of things seems to have disappeared.
Now, we know there are certain things that we dreamed up as little kids that aren't real, but that doesn't mean that we can't dream again and believe in some sort of magic or higher power influencing our life for the better. This can be done by practicing the power of GRATITUDE. And, I want to kick off a Gratitude Challenge in which I will be guiding you through what I practice daily through my learnings from The Secret books among others. No matter what religion, background, or beliefs you have this is for anyone and everyone. As you heard me mention in my last video post, gratitude is a universal practice with every culture or religion. It is something that can benefit everyone and change your life for the better.
As we kick off this first day of the challenge, I want to start by going back to the quote at the top of this post:
Whoever has gratitude will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have gratitude, even what they have will be taken from them.
This is the foundation of the power of practicing gratitude, and is the law of attraction with anything in life. What you give, you get in return. The more gratitude you have, the more abundance you will have in your life. Think of your thoughts and feelings as energy. Positive thoughts = Positive outcomes, Negative thoughts = Negative outcomes. Just like positive energy attracts like energy in nature. This is what we must practice with our thoughts. And the key is practice. Practice it daily to see results.
I always thought I was a grateful person. I grew up in a wonderful family. My parents taught my sister and I to live by the golden rule; to treat everyone as we wanted to be treated. Which we have always strived to do. We were always thankful for what we had. My parents always would make sure to instill values and humility, and humbleness into us. And I thought overall I was a very thankful person. I appreciated what I had. I was truly thankful when people would do something nice for me or give me a gift of some sort. I was thankful to have my family and friends. Yes, I would say I have always been a pretty satisfied and thankful person. But, I wasn’t always deliberately grateful. I didn't realize I wasn't that grateful of a person until I started to practice gratitude in my life like we're about to kick off today. I realized that just saying "Thank You" when something nice happened to me doesn't mean I'm truly a grateful person. Practicing gratitude is much more than that.
No matter who you are or the current situation of your life; if it's bad, it will get better through the practice of gratitude. If it's good, it can get better through the practice of gratitude. I promise you that after implementing these small things in your daily routine, your mindset and life will change for the better. But you have to practice it every day. It doesn't work unless you do it. We will get more into practicing gratitude each day, but I'm going to take this step-by-step so it's easy to follow.
For your first practice, you're going to get clear on your dreams and desires, and write them down for each area of your life. I've made a worksheet that you can download here, and print out. Take some time to think about exactly what you want in each of these categories and list them out. You can be as specific as you want. All you need to do is list the things you want, not how you're going to achieve them.
For example, for a material thing, you might write: house on the beach in San Diego, a lexus convertible. Or for a personal desire you might write: complete my first marathon, or write my first book.
It can be anything. This is just for you to see, so be truthful and write it all down. There is no right or wrong here. These are your dreams!
I'll be back tomorrow with our 2nd day of the Gratitude Challenge and another worksheet.
Here's the link again to the worksheet for you to print: Gratitude Challenge Worksheet #1