start monday with gratitude

Usually before you would complete today’s exercise, I’d invite you to bubble up and protect your energy. However, I’m not inviting you to do this as I want you to experience how this exercise impacts your energy.

Choose someone in your life who has a tendency to complain, someone who is negative person, and someone you can meet up with in person.

Get them to start talking by asking, “How are you?” or “What’s happening at the moment in your life?” or something similar, and then simply sit and nod as you listen to what they talk about.

Don’t speak, just listen and nod.

Where’s their focus? On themselves or on others? If it’s on others, is it really on others or how others impact them?

Do they tend to have a favourite theme around which they focus their attention?

And notice how your nodding is impacting them, does it encourage them to keep complaining, do you think?

Can you feel into their energy? If you can, how does it feel? And do you notice how your energy changes as they complain? How is their negativity impacting your vibration?

After about 10 minutes or so, find a way to politely end the conversation and walk away.

When you’re out of sight, perhaps at home or taking refuge in a nearby toilet, do an energy sweep to wipe away the negative energy that has attached itself to you from them.

To do this simply take your hand and sweep down your body, a few centimetres distance away from your skin, from your head to your feet.

When you reach your feet, flick your hands as if flicking away dirt. Make sure you’re not flicking your hands towards anybody nearby.

Repeat this sweeping and flicking motion until you’ve swept your whole body.

For today’s exercise you can choose the same person as yesterday or someone different. Again, don’t do anything to protect your energy field. And, again, open up the conversation with a general question to get them to engage.

Every time they say something negative, I invite you to (politely) say something positive back to them. So, for example, say it’s a wet day and they’re complaining about getting wet in the rain. You can retort back about how refreshing you find the rain.

Observe their behaviour as you meet every negative with something positive.

Do they continue to effortlessly complain and find something negative in everything or do they begin to struggle when coming face to face with your positivity? Do they end the conversation or can they keep talking until you end the conversation after about 10 minutes?

Notice everything about their behaviour.

See if you can feel into their energy and see if it changes in anyway. And notice how you feel during the conversation and how your energy may be changing.

Which do you think is the stronger of the two energies; the negative or the positive?

When the conversation ends, after about 10 minutes, repeat the energy sweep you did yesterday.

Usually when negative energy is met with positive energy, the positive energy has more power and can either change the negativity of the other, or make them feel uncomfortable so they either find a way to end the conversation first or feel backed into a corner and become defensive and, sometimes, offensive. Did you notice this?

Also, because you purposely were focusing on staying positive and replying in a positive manner, did you notice your energetic vibration fall as low as it did yesterday? Ideally it would actually have risen because you were so focused on staying positive.

Think of a challenging time in the recent past, a time when you felt really tested, when you felt the universe didn’t have your back.

Look into each step along the way during that challenging time and find things that went wrong or felt negative. Then turn this around by finding lessons, ways you grew, positive things that arose and express gratitude for them.

Usually when we are challenged in life, it’s actually an opportunity to grow, change and expand.

However, when you’re in the midst of the challenge it can be difficult to see those opportunities and positives.

And when the challenging time is over, we’re so relieved that we don’t look back or even think of uncovering anything positive that could have arise, any lessons that we learned as a result.

Next time you’re faced with a challenge, see if you can periodically step back and see if you can find any positive lessons you’re being taught, any ways in which you are growing as a result, anything that you can be grateful for. It’s not easy, especially the first few times you try it. But with practice, it should become less difficult. 

Think back to the most challenging time in your life to date.

Dig beneath the surface of that challenge to uncover something(s) positive that arose as a result.

Can you see that even in the most difficult and challenging times, if you look and are open to find something(s) positive, you can find it?

When times are particularly challenging, it can be hard in that present moment to find anything positive. However, when you look back after a few months, you often find the reason, the lesson that was to be experienced.

Every challenge, no matter how difficult, is an opportunity to change, grow and learn. Even if you can’t find that in the present moment, it’s important to look back to find it and, then, to express gratitude for it. That way you train your brain to understand and seek out the positive in every challenge, to look beyond the surface and see the potential for good and positivity in everything.

Think of all the positive things that have happened to you in the last year.

Write down as many as you can remember and express gratitude for them.

Think of all the situations that initially presented themselves as challenges in the last year and which you turned around easily to create something positive.

Write down as many as you can remember and express gratitude for them.

Think of all the challenging situations that you experienced in the past year through which you (and possibly others involved) positively grew and changed as a result.

Write down as many as you can remember and express gratitude for them.