start monday with gratitude

Have you ever done that exercise where you close your eyes and, assuming nothing in your life changes, you jump ahead to 1, 5, even 10 years in the future?

Let’s try it now.

Close your eyes. And think of everything that’s wrong in your life, everything that’s not as good as you would like it to be. Focus on the faults, on the failures, on the let downs.

Now cast your mind forward 1 year. Nothing has changed, everything remains the same.

Then cast your mind to 5 years, again nothing has changed.

And finally cats you mind to 10 years with nothing changing and everything staying as it is.

How do you feel? Are you looking forward to your future?

I bet you’re feel pretty crap right now, dreading the future and all it has in store for you, right?

This exercise is designed to encourage you to change your life starting today because, if you don’t change your life starting today, in 1, 5, 10 years’ time you’ll not have grown or changed. 

In reality what that exercise does is make you feel pretty crummy about your life today and fearful about the future.

However, do you think that trying to create a motivator out of something that actually makes you feel lousy and worthless, do you think that’s going to succeed? Of course not.

Such exercises come from a place of fear, a low vibrational emotion.

We already know about the Law of Attraction that like attracts like. So, an exercise that carries a low vibration cannot lead to results which carry a high vibration.

However, that exercise can be become a great motivator if used differently, from a more positive point of view, from the perspective of gratitude. And that’s what we’ll explore tomorrow.

Let’s try yesterday’s exercise from a high vibrational viewpoint so you can experience and feel the difference.

Close your eyes. Focus on your life today and everything you have to be grateful for. Focus on everything that has been attracted to you as a result of practising gratitude and keeping your vibration high everyday. Focus on how you feel in your heart right now as you give thanks for everything and everyone you have in your life today. Focus on how much you have positively changed and continue to change, thanks to your daily gratitude practice.

Now cast your focus to 1 years’ time, then to 5 years and finally to 10 years’ time.

How do you feel in 1, 5 and 10 years’ time if your life continues to move in this direction, filled with gratitude? Home in on those feelings for a while and then open your eyes.

Do you dread the future like you did yesterday? Of course not.

As a result of this exercise, will your focus remain on the future or return to the present moment because you know you have nothing to worry about in the future? Most likely you’ll easily and comfortably return to the present moment, your focus doesn’t remain in the future because there’s nothing there to fear, nothing to trap its focus.

So many exercises like this are designed to motivate you through fear, as you saw yesterday. And, yet, more often than not they fall flat on their face and don’t work because fear is not a good motivator.

Motivators that work are those that focus on higher emotional vibrations and, also, which focus on the present moment, the moment that is here, the moment that you can impact.

That is why gratitude works because it focuses on the fullness of the present moment and that encourages you to continue along that same path into the future.

Think of a 1-year goal you set around about this time last year.

Can you easily think of a goal or are you struggling to remember one?

If you can think of a goal, how far along are you towards achieving that goal? Perhaps you have achieved it already? If so, how did you celebrate your achievement? Did you celebrate?

Perhaps you changed the goal meantime, changed the goalposts or completely re-wrote the goal or, even, wrote it off and it’s no longer a goal of yours?

How significant is that goal in your life today? Is it as significant as it was a year ago? Have you forgotten about it? Or have you moved onto other goals?

What about your progress along the goal; have you been diligently tracking your progress? Do you know if you’ve reached or almost reached your goal, or how far left you have to go?

Can you see that even a 1-year go loses its momentum as you travel further away from the time you initially set your goal?

Indeed, many goals and plans we set are forgotten or disregarded before we even accomplish them. And sometimes we accomplish them without even realising we’re doing so.

So why give so much focus and attention to setting goals? Isn’t it better to focus on the here and now, on the fullness of the present rather than the emptiness of the future?

Think of a goal you set yourself, before you started practising gratitude, that you failed to achieve, for whatever reason.

It could have been that life got in the way, that your priorities changed, that it simply wasn’t achievable. It doesn’t matter why you didn’t achieve it, just that you didn’t.

How did you feel after you failed to achieve it?

When you failed, did your focus go to the end result, the failure, or did you focus on everything you had done and accomplished to even get that far in the process? Most likely you focused on failing to meet your goal and, as a result, you felt pretty lousy.

How would that have changed if you practised gratitude throughout the time you were working towards that goal?

When you have a gratitude practice, you focus on everything you’re grateful for in the present moment and you find good in everything.

So, let’s look back to that goal as if it were something you had been achieving as you practised daily gratitude.

If you had been practising daily gratitude, every day you stepped closer to the final destination of that goal, you would have expressed gratitude for all you had learned and achieved that day and up to that point.

So, look back now at the journey towards that goal and see how much you can find to be grateful for. What did you learn along the way? How did you grow as a result of walking towards this goal?

And then, at the end you failed. A gratitude practice teaches us to find the positive and the good in every outcome. You may have failed to achieve your goal but what positives can you find arising out of that perceived failure? How did you benefit from seemingly failing?

When you look at the end result, can you now say that it was still a failure? Yes you didn’t achieve exactly what you wanted. However, whenever you review your path, everything you learned, how you grew and changed, and how you can take something positive from the end result, can you honestly still say you failed? I don’t think so.

Look at you today compared to even 1 year ago.

As a result of practising gratitude every day, can you see how much you’ve changed, grown, learned? Can you appreciate how much better your life is today?

Looking back over the time that you’ve been practising gratitude daily, has everything run smoothly? Or have there still been some bumps in the road?

Just because you practised gratitude, doesn’t mean your life suddenly ran smoothly with no hiccups.

However, gratitude has encouraged you to see the positive in every hiccup, to see the good behind every bump in the road.

Can you see how prosperous your life is today as a result of those bumps and hiccups? Do you appreciate how prosperous your life is today?

Express gratitude for your life today, shaped by the obstacles, bumps, challenges and hiccups in your life.

When you practise gratitude, you appreciate that you are exactly who you are meant to be and you are exactly where you are meant to be in the present moment.

How does it feel to be truly grateful for who you are and where you are right now? It takes the pressure off, doesn’t it? It makes it easier to continue walking this current path and practising gratitude every day because you know that every day you are who you are meant to be and you are where you’re meant to be, right?

So, take some time to focus on who you are and where you are today and express true heartfelt gratitude and enjoy the feelings that that brings with it.

Spend time today sitting quietly, being still, and looking around and in your life to everything you have right here, right now.

See and appreciate just how prosperous and blessed your life is now.