start monday with gratitude

week 32

Welcome to Week 32, lovely soul.

Below you'll find the video and video transcript introducing you to this week's quote and musings.

Scroll further and you'll discover this week's daily exercises, high vibe tune, and downloadable wallpapers.

Gratitude is a key that unlocks the door of a joyful spirit. When days go by without gratefulness, the door can feel stuck, causing an emptiness inside. The door becomes un-wedged and reopens once you re-focus on what you are grateful for

Jackie Contoni

video transcript

I have yet to meet a person who practices daily gratitude and is, at the same time, grumpy, complaining, depressive. The two just simply do not go hand-in-hand. They’re polar opposites. Gratitude is a high vibration, a joyful feeling whereas complaining and grumpiness is such a low and heavy vibration. It’s impossible to experience both at the same time. So, when you have a daily gratitude practice, you open up your soul to a joyful experience. And, indeed, you unlock the door to your joyful spirit.

What I have noticed, from personal experience, is that if I go a few days without expressing gratitude, perhaps I’ve had a change in my routine or similar… something that knocks me off course, something that interferes with the positive daily rituals I’ve created in my life. That’s when the door to my joyful spirit begins to slowly close and become stuck.

It’s not that the door slams shut and I slide down a slope which is impossible to climb back up from because it’s so slippery. What I find is that little annoyances begin to show up in my life, my focus turns to the challenges around me, the have-nots rather than the haves, the disappointments, the feelings of lack lustre, the setbacks. Little by little my eyes forget to focus on the lightness and brightness around me, my mind turns to thoughts which are heavier, and my spirit begins to lose its sense of joy.

Slowly but surely the door to my soul begins to close and become stuck. And I feel a kind of nothingness, an emptiness in my life.

Having practised gratitude and experienced how it feels in my mind, body and soul, I know the warning signs when I’ve let my gratitude practise slip. I recognise the heaviness that partners a feeling of grumpiness, unhappiness and unappreciation. I know the emptiness that accompanies negativity and when your go-to emotion is complaint.

When these feelings and sensations come into my awareness, it’s my soul reminding me to un-wedge the door and re-open it up to the light of gratitude. As soon as these feelings and sensations come into my awareness, I immediately switch back to gratitude. I don’t berate myself for letting the door become stuck or wedged close as that only draws me further away from the lightness and brightness of gratitude, I simply turn my focus towards gratitude and invite gratefulness back into my life as a daily ritual.

Where it took a day or so for a lack of gratitude to chip away at my soul and wedge the door stuck, when I return to a practice of gratitude, the joy I feel is instantaneous. Immediately I can feel my heart swell and push against the door that has kept me locked in a room of emptiness. Suddenly that emptiness is filled with the light of joy and no door can keep my joyful soul hidden away.

The heavy and low vibrational energies of complaint and grumpiness, the focus on the have-nots rather than the haves… that all dissipates into the wind. And in its place my soul is filled with the light and high vibrational energies of gratitude.

daily gratitude practice

You’ve been practising daily gratitude for quite some time now. I think we could safely say that gratitude is becoming part of your life and part of your daily routine, right?

So, do you think it would be a good idea to pause a good habit that you have been working so diligently to create? Possibly not.

However, have you ever heard the phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder”?

Sometimes, when something becomes part of our everyday routine, the changes in our life are so small that we can go days or weeks without actually noticing them. Sometimes it takes a break in our routine to remind us that the good habit we have been diligently creating does actually positively impact our life.

And this is exactly what we’re going to do this week.

For part of this week, starting today, I am asking you not to practise gratitude.

Put your gratitude journal to one side. Cancel your scheduled gratitude meetings with yourself. Don’t let your mind go into gratitude thoughts before you sleep.

However, you have chosen to practice gratitude, stop. And then observe how you feel, what thoughts start to enter your head, how your energy feels, any changes you may experience when gratitude is removed.

To increase and speed up the effect I invite you to purposely think negative thoughts, to purposely complain (inwardly – this week doesn’t have to impact others) about your life, to basically immerse yourself in anything and everything that is represents the opposite of gratitude.

Remember, again today, anything you associate with gratitude and being grateful should be placed in a box and locked away this week.

Are you noticing any changes in yourself yet?

It can take a couple of days for you to notice the impact of your life, now, without gratitude as the changes may be subtle, they kind of sneak up on you.

Take note of even the smallest change.

How did you feel when you woke up today?

How did you feel when you looked to the day ahead?

Are you now beginning to notice a change in your outlook, in your expectations now that you’ve stopped practising gratitude?

What about sleeping?

Are you sleeping as well now as you were when you were practising gratitude?

Are you enjoying the small things in life as much as you did or not really noticing them?

What about your energy levels?

Keep noticing all and any changes that you are experiencing.

I think you’ve suffered enough, don’t you?

Let’s get back to practising gratitude today. Get back to your routine, whatever that may look like to you, of daily gratitude.

Do you notice an instant change in yourself, in your outlook, in your expectations, in your enjoyment and appreciation of the little daily things?

Often when we stop a good habit, it’s a bit more difficult to notice the changes immediately.

However, when we return to a good habit after a couple of days, the changes are immediate and are noticeable. Did you experience that?

Looking back over this week did you prefer how you felt by Thursday or how you felt on Friday?

Has this week demonstrated to you the positive difference and impact that gratitude makes in your life?

You may not have noticed just much gratitude has been impacting your life because it’s been a gradual process and we often don’t notice gradual change. However, this week has given you a taste of who you were before gratitude and who you are with gratitude.

Silly question, however, do you prefer the version of you with gratitude?

How did you feel when you woke up this morning, now you’re back on the gratitude bandwagon?

Also, looking back over this week, did you notice if people changed around you also?

Although the lower emotions you would purposely been experiencing, such as complaint, you experienced inward, they would have changed your energy and people around you would have reacted accordingly, whether they were conscious of doing so or not.

When you consider your life, expectations, interactions with others around you as a result of practising gratitude daily does it remind you that taking a short time out of your busy schedule to practise gratitude benefits every area of your life? Do you have new-found gratitude for your gratitude practice?

and let's not forget...

This week's high vibe tune reminds us that life is always better when you're dancing

dance along to this week's high vibe tune here

have gratitude wherever you go...

... with this week's gratitude quote wallpaper.

Note: details of how to download this week's wallpaper is provided below.

“Gratitude is a key that unlocks the door of a joyful spirit. When days go by without gratefulness, the door can feel stuck, causing an emptiness inside. The door becomes un-wedged and reopens once you re-focus on what you are grateful for.” ~ Jackie Contoni

16:9

16:10

4:3

mobile

how to download your wallpaper

Before copying one of the pictures below, you'll want to quickly check your screen settings because the worst thing you can do is use a wallpaper with an aspect ratio that differs from the aspect ratio of your screen.

The aspect ratio of a rectangle is simply the proportion between width and height. The most common are 16:9, 16:10 and 4:3. And it will be for these 3 sizes that I shall provide you with your free wallpaper.

To find your screen resolution follow this basic guide. Steps for your computer may vary slightly but I hope this will give you some guidance:

  • Right-click the desktop and select Display settings.
  • Scroll down until you see "Resolution" (you may have to choose an "Advanced" option)
  • To find your aspect ratio, divide the width over the height. For example, if my resolution is 1920 x 1080 then I would divide 1920 over 1080 to get 1.778, which indicates a 16:9 resolution. Similarly, 1.6 indicated 16:10 and 1.333 indicates 4:3
  • When you've calculated your screen's aspect ratio, go to the picture below that matches that size
  • Right click on the picture and select "Set as Desktop Background"
  • Choose whether to "Fill", "Fit", or "Stretch" your picture - if you've chosen the right size "Fit" will be your best option
  • Select "Set Desktop Background" and you're done

  • First, save the wallpaper image to your phone by pressing your finger on the wallpaper image and hold down on it until you see a menu.
  • From here, click the “Save image” tab, and it will begin downloading.
  • The next step is to set this saved image as your wallpaper by pressing and holding a blank area on your screen (meaning where no apps are placed), and home screen options will appear.
  • Select 'add wallpaper' and choose whether the wallpaper is intended for 'Home screen', 'Lock screen', or 'Home and lock screen'.
  • Another set of options will appear where you can choose where the photo you would like to use will be coming from, namely the Gallery.
  • If necessary, crop the image to a suitable size. Once satisfied, simply click 'Done'.

  • First, save the wallpaper image to your phone by pressing your finger on the wallpaper image and hold down for about 2 seconds until a menu appears.
  • From here, click “Save Image“, and it will begin downloading.
  • The next step is to set this saved image as your wallpaper by, first, going to the 'Photos' app and selecting the wallpaper photo you've saved there.
  • Click on the share icon on the lower left corner of the screen, then select 'Use as Wallpaper'.
  • Then choose to set the photo as either the lock screen, home screen or both.

 

download and keep week 32