If you were to take a piece of paper and a pen and start
now to write down a list of all the blessings that you have
in your life, it would occupy you for the remainder of the
days you have available to you.
The hand that grasps the pen, the mind that catalogues
the blessings, the will that makes the choices, the lungs
that breathe each breath, the heart that pumps your
blood to your brain, the eyes that enable you to see the
words, the ability to read and write, the sunshine that
lights the page, the opportunity to choose the attitude of
gratitude are just a few quick examples of the endless list
of things that you have to appreciate.
Your life is filled with blessings. Most of these you take
for granted, not even thinking about them. This devalues,
not only the things themselves, but also you, yourself.
Learning to honor all things as being valuable, even
sacred, and understand how blessed you are to have the
opportunity to play this game called Life on Planet Earth
increases the value of you, your life and opens you up to
receive even more abundance and blessings.
Gratefulness brings a great fullness to life. The choice to
adopt and hold a moment-by-moment attitude of
gratitude is the choice that differentiates those who
suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune and those
who are blessed with a joyous and abundant life.
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Yes, that is correct. It is not the actual events and
circumstances that occur during one’s journey through
life that determine whether or not a person is happy and
prosperous; it is the conscious and willful choice to be
grateful for all the bounty that life has to offer AND to be
grateful for the opportunity to participate in and
contribute to the experience of life, which enables and
empowers any individual, regardless of circumstance, to
have a fulfilling and rewarding life.
Like everything else on the path to mastery, gratitude is
a choice. You can choose to wait for some meaningfully
pleasant situation to arise and then feel gratitude in
response, or you can choose to be grateful at all times, in
all circumstances, and watch as the world conspires to
assist you in your path.
If you are grateful for what you already have, the world
will conspire to give you more to be grateful for. If you
are resentful of what you already have, the world will
conspire to give you more to resent.
Moreover, the true master learns to be grateful, in
advance, for the things that are idealized and desired.
Why? Because, being grateful in advance for some
attainment or accomplishment does two very important
things: first, it tricks your subconscious into believing
that the goal is certain and second, it convinces other
people, with whom you must interact to achieve your
desires, that you know what you are about, that you are
a winner.
When your subconscious is convinced that the goal is
certain, it will provide the ways and means of fulfilling
or achieving that goal. Since your subconscious is
connected to the great collective subconscious of
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humanity, it also informs this ‘morphic field’ of your
profound intent and the result is that the people,
resources and conditions for fulfillment will show up in
your life. All this will happen because you chose to be
grateful in advance of the havingness. The act of being
grateful in advance is proof of your faith and belief in the
actuality, eventuality and realness of the manifestation of
your desired ideal.
And when other people are convinced that you are
convinced of the realness of your goals because of your
demonstrative gratitude for their reality, they will rally
around you and provide both physical and metaphysical
support for you and your goals.
The benefits of the physical support (the investment of
time, effort and money) to contribute to you and your
goals are obvious. What may not be obvious, to those
unfamiliar with the laws of the universe, is that the
metaphysical support is even more crucial. The added
belief of others in you and your goals brings an ‘aura’ of
success about you that creates, in turn, even more
support for you.
The knowledge that all things, existent and potential,
are, at their pure essence, a myriad of interlocking and
interwoven vibrations of pure energy and that the
emanations of your consciousness (and the emanations
of the other individual consciousnesses of the people
who associate with you) interfere with and interact with
pre-existing vibrations to create new patterns that result
in the manifestation of actualities is what denotes
wisdom and mastery.
If other people are convinced that you are a successful
person, their energetic output (thought and belief) will
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serve to enhance your own power to enact the Law of
Attraction to produce the results you desire.
All this, and more, happens when you choose to hold
and to express gratefulness for what you have and what
you claim or expect to have as you journey through life.
Begin each day with an expression of your gratitude for
all the blessings that life has bestowed upon you and
your day will be filled with even more and greater
blessings.
The choice is yours. Every breath you breathe can be an
expression of gratitude. Existing in a state of gratefulness
is very alike existing in a state of grace. Your blessings
multiply constantly.
Being grateful denotes your knowledge of, and
application of, one of the most important aspects of
creation… who you are and how you are produces what
you have.
And gratitude, of course, makes what you have all that
much more enjoyable.
Most people sleepwalk through life, unaware of the
majesty of this universe we live in and participate in
creating, unappreciative of their own opportunity to
become conscious creators and contributors.
Those who are fully awake live in a constant state of
wonder and appreciation that in some moments even
escalates from wonder to joy and from appreciation to
that state of profound gratitude for the gifts of life and
self-awareness that is called bliss.
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There exists a magical power in the feeling of gratitude.
Yes, a magical power.
However, before I talk about the magic of gratitude, I
want to talk about its opposite. Not the lack of gratitude,
not even ingratitude; but resentfulness.
Powerful emotions attached to specific repetitive
thoughts make things manifest. Intentional thought
combined with heartfelt desire is how masters and
winners create the circumstances and events of their
lives. This powerful knowledge is one of the most crucial
things a person who desires to be a creator instead of a
mere creature needs to know and integrate into their life.
There is a dark side. Just as what you love/desire can
come true, so too, as even the bible reminds us... that
what you fear shall come to pass. You can easily witness
the power of fear making things happen in many
people's lives. A victim's attitude often creates events that
cause that person to say, "see, I told you so." They don't,
of course, know that it was their very own fear that
attracted the bad thing into their life. It is the proverbial
self-fulfilling prophecy.
It works the same with gratitude and resentfulness.
When you walk around with the attitude of gratitude, life
does not just seem better because of your psychological
take on life, it actually is better because of the magic
creative power of intentionally combining positive
thought and positive emotion.
However, if you adopt the attitude of resentfulness,
things don't just seem bad... bad things actually do
happen more often than they would otherwise.
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Resentfulness is insidious. Once you start to resent the
circumstances and conditions of your life, you begin
attracting more things into your life that you will not
welcome UNTIL AND UNLESS you change your
attitude.
Some molehill appears on your path and your
resentfulness makes it into a mountain blocking your
way forward. The next thing you know, a real mountain
shows up. Why? Because you attracted it by your way of
being. And now it is harder to be grateful instead of
resentful.
That is why masters at the art of living see obstacles as an
opportunity to learn, to grow, to become more powerful;
and, winners see obstacles as proof that they are
traveling the high road. They know that the flat, wide,
easy road is the path of mediocrity. It is wide, flat and
easy because it is well traveled by the majority, those
who do not aspire or dare to achieve great things, or to
challenge life and themselves to deliver more than the
norm.
Losers resent winners. You see it all the time. Even the
average person delights in the often public trials and
tribulations of the high achievers. These people
stubbornly refuse to comprehend that it is their own
resentfulness that actually makes them losers with much
in their own lives to resent. They also don't understand
that the winner is grateful not just because things are
going right, but because it is the initial choice to feel a
sense of gratitude that makes things go right in the first
place.
Resentfulness is insidious. You may not even be aware
that you harbor an unconscious resentfulness of
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successful people. But pay close attention! If you even
once have thought that such and such a person does not
deserve the success they have accomplished, there is an
element of resentfulness in your heart. This resentment
will handicap you from achieving your own success.
Learn instead to celebrate the successes of everyone.
After all, you would want others to celebrate your own
success. It is the simple application of the Golden Rule…
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Learn to celebrate other people’s success. Extend your
empathy when they stumble.
If you want to be a winner, start being grateful; start
existing in a constant state of thanksgiving. Start
celebrating your own life and your own blessings right
now. You don't need some annual celebration of some
romanticized historical event to feel grateful and give
thanks. As long as you are still breathing, you have much
to be thankful for.
Begin right now. Make a list of all the things that you
have to be grateful for having already received. Let me
start you off with some basics you may not think of on
your own.
You can read. One out of every five adults alive
today is illiterate and cannot read this sentence.
You can afford to buy this book. About half the
population on this planet lives on less than $2 per
day and cannot adequately afford to pay for the
basic essentials of life, let alone some book about
improving the quality of their life.
You have the opportunity right now to create an
abundant, fulfilling and contributory life. Most
people are unaware of how to go about doing
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that. Remember this: if you are reading this, you
should know that you are better off than the
overwhelming majority of other people on this
planet.
There are so many things to be grateful for that you could
spend all day every day simply listing them; yet so many
instead spend so much time cataloging their various
perceived misfortunes. Complain, complain, complain is
the common refrain.
Complaining about the trials and tribulations of life
seems to be the norm rather than celebrating the joys and
wonders that are present in everyone’s life, no matter
what circumstances they may encounter in any given
moment.
This focus of attention on what is not considered the
ideal not only creates an attitude that prevents the
enjoyment of the blessings you do have, but also
contributes to ensuring that you will continue to create
more frustration and disappointment.
When you make the conscious choice to begin expressing
your continuous gratitude, you will find that the quality
of your life improves dramatically and that the success
you desire is attracted into your life.
You have, right now, and always, the chance to
appreciate and to honor all you have been given. You
have, right now, and always, the chance to enjoy the
pleasures of walking around on planet earth. You have,
right now, and always, the chance to make a meaningful
difference in the lives of other people.
Give thanks. You'll end up with plenty to be grateful for.
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To be grateful for something means to appreciate its
value. The word appreciate has two meanings. I’ll let
Merriam Webster’s dictionary explain…
1 a: to grasp the nature, worth, quality, or significance of
b: to value or admire highly c: to judge with heightened
perception or understanding : be fully aware of d: to
recognize with gratitude 2: to increase the value of
An investment that appreciates over time becomes more
valuable. Anything that you have that you appreciate
becomes more valuable. If you really appreciate what
you already have and what you are enabled to idealize
and realize, then your life will become filled with even
more valuables to appreciate.
You can express your gratitude to some deity; you can
express your gratitude to the universe; you can express
your gratitude to thin air. It matters not to whom or to
what you express your gratitude; it only matters that you
FEEL grateful. It is the emotional energy that creates the
power.
The energetic strength of your consciously chosen
emotional output can transform your life from frustration
to fulfillment, from paucity to prosperity, from lack to
abundance, from failure to success.
Change your overall attitude and predominant feelings
from fear into love, from resentment into gratitude, from
misery to joy and you will find yourself empowered to
create a life of success almost as if by magic. Fear is a
choice of attitude. Love is a choice. Resentment is a
choice. Gratitude is a choice. Misery is a choice. Joy is a
choice. Knowing that, what do you choose?
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The word scared can be transformed into the word
sacred simply by moving the letter ‘c’. Similarly, your life
can be transformed simply by moving your seeing
(perspective) of life and its many blessings.
The magic power of gratitude is this: the more you are
and feel grateful for what you already have, the more
that you will have to be grateful for. Do you want more?
Learn to be more grateful.
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Quick Review:
The attitude of gratitude makes life more enjoyable and
brings ever more things to be grateful for having. It is an
endless upward spiral.
Gratitude has a magic power that convinces your
subconscious, other people and the universe that you
recognize your own value and the value of the many
blessings you already have and thus, you deserve to have
even more to appreciate.
Direct Action Steps:
Each day, before getting out of bed, spend ten minutes
expressing your gratitude for all the blessings you have
in your life. Mentally list a few of these many things that
you enjoy having and your day will unfold as if you were
especially blessed.
Each night, before going to sleep, spend ten minutes
expressing your gratitude for the things that you are in
the process of creating. If you fall asleep while doing this,
it is even better, because your subconscious mind, that
does not sleep, will be working to process this
information and will supply you with the ideas you need
to make your dreams come true.
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"It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things
to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of
natural laws”
~ Bertrand Russell
“Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey
the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the
consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the
consequences of his choices.”
~ Alfred Montapert
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