When I was around 10 or 11 years old, I remember going to pick out some cassette tapes. The first I purchased with my own allowance money. I don't know why I picked cassette tapes because CDs were out, but I think it was because I didn't yet have my own CD player, and my parent's cars just had the cassette players in them. Anyway, one of the cassette albums I picked, which was one of my favorites was Michael Jackson's. One of the songs on that album was "Man in the Mirror". I loved listening to that song, and even carried it with me on my ipods years down the road.
The main chorus in the song goes:
I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change
The reason I'm bringing that song up is because it talks about what we've been practicing over the last month with our gratitude. If you want to make a change in your life, and make your life and the world around you better, you need to change yourself. Your thoughts need to change for the better to change you and your circumstances for the better.
You can spend the rest of your life trying to change everyone and everything else that has hurt you. You can complain and criticize all you want, feel bad for yourself, and wonder "why me". But I promise you that it will NEVER change your life for any good. If you've been following my gratitude challenge guidance over the last 27 days, you should now realize that any change you want for the better in your life must start with you and your mental state. And you have complete control over it.
Negative feelings about yourself cause the most damage to your life. More than any negative feelings about events or other people. When you're negative about yourself you take that negative energy with you everywhere and it rubs off on everything you come in contact with.
If you want good things to come to you, you must start thinking good things about yourself and your life and be grateful for it all. Those positive energies will reflect out from you and into the world around you and attract more good.
So today's gratitude practice is to look at yourself in the mirror and say Thank You to you. If you can, say thank you to yourself for 3 specific things you are grateful for about yourself. The more you are grateful for being yourself the better feelings you will have about yourself and your life.
Today's checklist:
1. Make your list of 10 things you are grateful for and why. Read down your list and after each item say thank you, thank you, thank you!
2. Look at yourself in the mirror and be truly grateful for your life, for being alive. Be grateful for being you. Say thank you to yourself as you look at yourself in the eyes in the mirror. If you can, say thank you for 3 specific things about yourself.
3. Before you go to sleep tonight, pick up your gratitude object and think about all the good things that happened to you today. Pick the best thing that happened and say Thank you!