start monday with gratitude

Think of something that a friend or family member has in their life that you don’t but would love.

It can be a material object such as a new car or something intangible such as being truly loved by another.

The more you focus on that thing, how do you feel? Can you feel it starting to eat you up? Can you feel it starting to pull your emotions and energy down? What about the thoughts rising in your head? Are they positive, loving thoughts? I doubt it.

Notice everything that happens in your head and in your body the more you focus on this missing thing in your life.

Feel the envy and jealousy start to rise up. Feel your heart and your body start to constrict and tighten.

Take note of everything you feel and experience.

And then turn your focus to gratitude.

Express gratitude for anything and everything in your life, for only a few minutes.

And take note of how different you feel.

Can you see how damaging focusing on one missing thing in your life can be? And after spending a little time expressing gratitude for all you have in life can you see how quickly and how effectively it changes and neutralises those feelings of envy and jealousy? Wouldn’t you rather live every day with the feelings of gratitude than experiencing emotions such as envy and jealousy?

Think of an opportunity that a friend or family member got to enjoy that you missed out on.

It could be meeting the perfect partner, it could be going on an adventure that you could only dream about, it could be achieving something great in their life.

How does it feel to see someone else achieve or receive what you couldn’t and haven’t? Perhaps what they achieved or received seemingly came easy to them or just happened overnight. How does that make you feel?

Ask yourself questions like “Why me, what didn’t this happen to me?” or “What makes them so special and me not?” or “Why don’t I deserve something great like this?”

How do you feel when you really give in to those emotions, when you answer those questions honestly? How does your attitude and perspective towards your friend or family member change? How do you feel knowing you have so little compared to them, that you haven’t achieved or received the opportunity that they have? Do you feel bitter? Do you feel angry? Do you feel hard-done-by? And, at this moment in time, do you feel resentment and even hostility towards your friend or family member?

Now switch your focus to gratitude. Spend a couple of minutes only focusing on gratitude, on everything you have in your life, all the good things that you have.

Again, can you see how damaging focusing on one missing thing in your life can be? And after spending a little time expressing gratitude for all you have in life can you see how quickly and how effectively it changes and neutralises any feelings of hostility?

Think back to something that didn’t work out as you expected.

Perhaps you applied for a job that you knew you were qualified to do and would be your dream job and you didn’t get it, or perhaps you’d planned to go on holiday with a close friend but they couldn’t go in the end and the holiday was cancelled.

Whatever situation you choose, think of how much you missed out on by it not working out the way you had hoped or expected. Think of everything negative that continued to happen as a result.

Based on everything that went wrong or didn’t happen because of this one thing, if the same or a similar situation arose again in the future, how confident would you be that it would work out next time? If the same or a similar situation arose, would you be concerned or worried that “history will repeat itself”?

Now consider the same thing that didn’t work out as you expected. This time focus on all the positives that arose as a result of it not working out.

Perhaps something better came along like a better job opportunity. Perhaps if you’d gone on that holiday with a friend, you might have got caught up in an airline strike when you were due to return home and were left stranded.

Focus on all the good things, the positives that arose as a result of this not working out for you, everything you have to be grateful for as a result.

Based on all the positives that arose, how confident would you be if the situation presented itself again, that it would work out better next time? Would you be so concerned that next time things would go wrong or would you be more optimistic that things would work out or, if they didn’t, they’d work out better?

When you focus on the negatives, on the things that could go wrong, can you see that that only causes you concerns and worries about the future? Whereas when something doesn’t work out but you find the positives, that worries about things going wrong again dissipate.

Can you see how gratitude can dissipate and neutralise worry?

Focusing on the positives and everything to be grateful in your life, do you have enough in your life today to live comfortable and fully?

If gratitude shows you that you have enough today to live comfortably and fully, what about tomorrow? Are you worried that you’ll waken up tomorrow and lose everything in your life or do you trust that tomorrow will become a new today and you’ll still have enough to live comfortably and fully?

Does gratitude therefore link to trust, trust that tomorrow will be similar to today?

And, therefore, does gratitude demonstrate that, if you trust all will be well tomorrow, there’s no need to focus beyond the present moment?

And if you focus on the present moment and all you have in this present moment, is there any point wasting energy on worry?

Take some time today to remind yourself of everything you have today, that you have all that you need to live comfortably and fully. And as you remind yourself that you have today, trust that tomorrow will bring what you need tomorrow. As a result, close the space to worry.

Where gratitude and trust are, worry has no room.

Think back to a time when things just seemed to work out perfectly, one after the other. A time when life just flowed, and everything fell neatly and perfectly into place with ease.

It may have been one single perfect day, or it may have been a week or longer where things just seemed to flow.

Cast your mind back to that time and how you felt. Did you feel happy or sad? Did you feel confident or worried about the future? Did life feel effortless or challenging? Did things just drop into place, or did you have to work hard to ensure everything connected? Were you in a high vibrational place enjoying positive emotions or a low vibrational place experiencing negative emotions?

When life flows with ease, it’s because we’re riding a positive vibration, we trust the universe, we’re grateful for everything that’s flowing to us. In essence we’re attracting to us things of a similar energy to ours. And the more we receive good things, the better we feel, the more we maintain a high vibration and the more good stuff the universe sends our way… for as long as we keep our vibration high.

Today think back to a time when you fell into victimhood, where something happened to you and you asked “why me?”

How did you feel at that time? What emotions did you experience? Did you feel happy or sad? Did you feel confident or worried about what would happen next? Did life feel effortless or a slog? Did things just drop into place, or did nothing seem to fall in your favour? Were you in a high vibrational place enjoying positive emotions or a low vibrational place experiencing negative emotions?

When we enter a victim state where things seem to go wrong and we ask “why me?”, we are keeping our vibration low. And when our vibration is low, we attract things of a similar vibration. Which means that when you enter the victim state, nothing seems to go your way for as long as you remain in that state.

Casting your mind back to the time when you fell into victimhood asking, “why me?”, follow the sequence of events from beginning to end. Can you see how things spiralled and continued to go wrong for you? Even things that weren’t connected seemed to go wrong?

For example, you unexpectedly and unfairly lost your job. And before you knew it, you caught a bug and ended up in bed for a week, your quarterly utility bill arrived and it was twice as much as usual… and so on.

Can you see how one negative thing led to another and another?

When life throws us a curveball and we fall to the floor and enter a victim state, our vibration plummets. And when our vibration is low, we attract things of a similar low vibration which means that more things in life seem to go wrong.

Things will only turn around when we raise our vibration and the best way to do that is through gratitude.

Let’s focus on the same time from yesterday’s exercise, the time when you fell into victimhood and could track everything negative that happened in your life immediately after as a result of falling into this lower vibration.

It’s not possible to go back in time and see how things would have been different had you not fallen into victimhood but, rather, found the positives of what happened and expressed gratitude.

However, you can, today, take each of the seemingly negative occurrences arising as a result of that initial situation when you fell into victimhood and find the positives, things to be grateful for in each one, one at a time.

So starting with the initial experience where you feel into victimhood. What positives can you find from that experience? What have you to be grateful for, for things seemingly not working out in your favour?

Perhaps, further down the line, things actually turned out better for you. Or, as a result of this first experience in the spiral, you learned a valuable lesson that you’ve been able to apply to life today.

When you’re finished finding the positives and the reasons to be grateful for this initial experience, the kickoff of the downward spiral, move on to the next resulting event or experience that you tracked in yesterday’s exercise and, again, find the positives, the things to be grateful for as a result of this next event or experience.

Repeat this for each and every resulting event or experience that you tracked yesterday.

When you’ve completed this, look through how much good, how many positives, how much you have to be grateful for as a result of something that seemed to be so negative.

Can you see that, even when things don’t seem to work out for us and seem to spiral downward, that there are always positives to be found and things to be grateful for?