start monday with gratitude

Think back to the very beginning of this year-long gratitude experience.

How much gratitude did you express every day? Did you only express gratitude for the obvious blessings and miracles in your life, the ones that caught your attention when they arose and not consider expressing gratitude for the small daily things that you took for granted?

Compare the level and amount of gratitude you expressed back then with the amount you express today.

With daily gratitude practice you’ll be able to see a big difference.

Has your heart or any part of your body struggled, become damaged and hurt, felt strained as a result of the increasing and growing amount of gratitude you express each day? I doubt it.

Express gratitude for something small in your life, something that happens daily that you could easily take for granted. An example could be breathing or hot running water in your shower.

Tune into how you feel in your body when you express gratitude for this small daily blessing.

Tune into how you heart feels and, possibly, expands when you express gratitude.

Can you feel changes anywhere else in your body?

Without referencing the actual blessing you’re expressing gratitude for, write down everything you sense and feel as you express your gratitude.

Express gratitude for something big in your life, something that doesn’t happen every day, something that you would never take for granted and easily express gratitude for when it arises. An example could be when you receive a visit from a special friend or family member who lives quite far away from you.

Tune into how you feel in your body when you express gratitude for this blessing.

Tune into how you heart feels and, possibly, expands when you express gratitude.

Can you feel changes anywhere else in your body?

Without referencing the actual blessing you’re expressing gratitude for, write down everything you sense and feel as you express your gratitude.

Look at what you noted down for your experience on both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Don’t think about whether you were expressing gratitude for the small daily blessing that you could easily take for granted or for the big blessing that you easily express gratitude for when it arises. The actual blessing isn’t important. What’s important is how you felt gratitude in your body.

When you read what you wrote down can you see any major differences between how expressing gratitude impacted you when you were focused on a small daily blessing or a big blessing, or was the feeling, the change in your body, the impact similar no matter what you were expressing gratitude for?

Does gratitude distinguish between something tiny and something big or are all blessings equal ‘in the eyes’ of gratitude?

You usually tend to find that your body and energy will react the same way no matter what you’re expressing gratitude for because regardless of whether you’re expressing gratitude for something small or something big, the vibration and frequency of gratitude will always be the same.

If you did notice a big difference between expressing gratitude for something small compared with something big, can you look back and work out where you felt that difference, where it was arising? In your heart and energy or in your head?

Your heart and energy should not have differentiated between something small and something big. Gratitude is gratitude. However, your head may have created a differentiation, giving more weight to the bigger blessing.

Yesterday’s exercise was designed to show that the energy, the impact of gratitude is the same no matter how small or large the blessing.

Today we’re going to repeat the exercises from Tuesday through to Thursday, all in one go, so you can get to feel the size of gratitude.

So, let’s start by focusing in on a small, everyday blessing that you could easily take for granted. Really tune into how that feels in your body, where you feel it in your body. Also take note of any thoughts/ideas/ suggestions that come into your mind.

Then when you’ve fully tuned into it, move on to express gratitude for something big. And, again, tune into how that feels in your body, where you feel it in your body. Again, also take note of any thoughts/ideas/suggestions that come into your mind.

Does gratitude feel the same for each blessing whether it is small or big?

And did you notice if your head came into play at any time, perhaps telling you that you felt more gratitude for the larger blessing?

Can you separate the thoughts etc of your mind from the feelings in your body so you can truly and only feel gratitude?

I invite you to focus on a really tiny daily blessing, something you can easily take for granted.

Focus on how expressing gratitude for that tiny blessing feels in your body. Try to tune out your mind and any contributions it might be making in today’s exercise.

Now move on to express gratitude for something bigger, still small, still a blessing you could easily take for granted. Again, focus in on how this feels in your body, trying to ignore any contribution and suggestions from your mind.

Gradually move up the scale of blessings from something small and daily and something a bit bigger that happens less often.

Then continue up further to something bigger and bigger and bigger, until you are expressing gratitude for a really large blessing (present or in the past) that arose only once.

Each time feel into your body and how expressing gratitude impacts your body and energy. Each time try to tune out the mind and ignore any ideas or suggestions it may have.

When you tune solely into your body and energy, is there any difference in how you feel gratitude in your heart, body and energy when you are expressing gratitude for something tiny versus something huge?

We’re going to do the opposite of what we did yesterday.

Like yesterday, we’re going to move up the scale of blessings and express gratitude for something really tiny that happens every day which you could easily take for granted and we’re going to tune into blessings one at a time that increase in size until you reach one which is huge, that only happened once.

However, unlike yesterday, we’re not going to tune out the mind and the thoughts and suggestions of our mind. We are, though, going to ignore any feelings in our heart, body, energy. Solely focus on how the mind behaves as you express gratitude for each and every blessing.

When you tune solely into your mind and head, is there any difference in how you experience gratitude when you are expressing gratitude for something tiny versus something huge?

Does your mind/head give greater weight to larger blessings compared to the small daily blessings?

Does your mind/head react differently to gratitude compared to your heart, body and energy?