start monday with gratitude

Spend between 10 and 15 minutes focusing on the things that are missing in your life, the gaps in your life, the things you wish you had but don’t.

After those 10 to 15 minutes, turn inward and ask yourself “how am I feeling right now?”

Are your emotions high or low? Do you feel happy or frustrated? Do you feel fulfilled or unsatisfied? Do you feel full of energy or lack lustre?

When you focus on what’s missing, you’re focusing on something negative.

And when your focus turns to the negative, naturally your energy, your emotions, your mindset follow suit and become more negative.

Spend between 10 and 15 minutes focusing on everything and everyone you have in your life, expressing gratitude for every blessing both large and small.

After those 10 to 15 minutes, turn inward and check in on how you feel.

Are your emotions high or low? Do you feel happy or frustrated? Do you feel fulfilled or unsatisfied? Do you feel full of energy or lack lustre?

When you focus on what you already have in your life, you’re focusing on something positive.

And when your focus turns to the positive, naturally your energy, your emotions, your mindset follow suit and become more positive too.

Compare how you feel after today’s exercise with how you felt after yesterday’s exercise. Can you see the difference? Which feelings would you prefer to experience every day?

We’re going to do a shortened version of the previous days’ exercises.

First of all, spend about 5 minutes focusing on everything that’s missing in your life, the gaps.

Afterwards, spend about 5 minutes focusing on everything and everyone you have in your life, expressing gratitude for every blessing both large and small.

After the 10 minutes are up, answer the following questions:

Could you have more easily continued finding things to be grateful for after the time was up or finding things that are missing in your life?

When you practise gratitude every day for a while your mindset shifts, and you find it so much easier to find thing to be grateful for than things that are missing.

Did you notice the shift in your emotions and energy when you moved from the negative focus of things that are missing to the positive focus of gratitude for everything and everyone in your life?

It’s good to feel and recognise both negative and positive energy in your body. That way, when you drop into a negative emotion, you can pick up warning signs from your body and act on them before you realise in your mind what has happened.

Focus on something that is missing in your life, a gap in your life; something that, in the past, would have really niggled away at you, would have irritated you on a regular basis because it was missing.

How do you feel about that missing something now?

After months of practising gratitude daily, does that missing something niggle you as much now as it did in the past or have you been so focused on gratitude that you’ve altered your mindset so that something missing no longer even reaches your radar?

Can you see how much gratitude has changed your mindset and your outlook? Isn’t that something to be grateful for.

Think of something in the past that you enjoyed, that made you happy. Perhaps someone threw you a surprise party, or someone gave you an unexpected gift.

Think of something that made you happy but which, at the time, you didn’t or forget to express gratitude for.

Can you see how happiness can exist without gratitude? That feeling happy doesn’t not automatically translate into being grateful?

The two emotions, happiness and gratitude, are relatively close when we think of them in terms of vibrational energy. However, gratitude requires conscious awareness. You can feel happy and be happy without expressing it verbally or inwards. However, gratitude requires expression whether that expression is spoken out loud or quietly inwards.

Happiness is a feeling whereas gratitude is also an action.

Now think of something in the past for which you expressed heart-felt gratitude.

Did this something also make you happy?

When you feel grateful and express true gratitude for something, do you also experience happiness? Yes… gratitude is a higher vibrational energy which will also encompass the energy of happiness.

Think of someone, a friend or even someone famous, who you consider to be happy, whose life you consider (or have considered) to be full and close to perfect.

Now sit back and really think about their life and what is or could be missing.

For example, a famous person with children. Can you imagine their daily struggles trying to keep their children away from media attention?

A friend whose partner works away from home often. Do you think they, perhaps, miss each other’s company when they’re apart?

Can you see that nobody’s life is perfect, that everyone has gaps or missing pieces in their life?

The difference lies in those who are so grateful for what they have, they forget about the gaps and, so, in turn we also fail to see them until we dig a little or use our imaginations.

Consider some of the missing things, the gaps you focused on in Monday’s exercise.

Rather than seeing them as something negative, something missing, can you turn them around and find something positive about them?

Each of us has gaps in our lives, things that could be deemed as missing, if we choose to look for them. However, if we can see those perceived negatives as something positive, something to be grateful for, we can actually fill in the gaps until there actually are no gaps in our lives.