In my last blog piece, I talked about compassion, recognising the suffering of others and then taking action to help. And that compassion should be a year-round activity not just a Christmas special. As we step full force into the festive giving period, doing so with both compassion and gratitude will serve us well. Gratitude is that sense of feeling appreciation for what someone or something has done for you in your life. Genuinely feeling gratitude for what you have experienced, what you have in your life now, and what future opportunities your life offers you, is a powerful state to put yourself in.
Feeling gratitude is recommended by Rhonda Byrne in her best seller The Secret. Where she and others share their experiences with, what is known as, the Law of Attraction. This is the idea that like attracts like, and that our thoughts become things. How you make this work in your life is to; Ask, Believe, and then Receive. To a scientific mind the Law of Attraction sounds like pseudoscience or New Age wishful thinking. This is because the dominant scientific paradigm is reductionist materialism. The idea that consciousness is produced by and in the brain. Therefore your thoughts cannot ‘escape’ your bony skull and influence things on the outside. I do have some sympathy for that view because that is what we are taught, and how, to most people, the world seems to work. After all we do trust scientist and engineers, who think this way, to build tall buildings, airplanes, and nuclear power plants. But as I discussed on my Just Two Things podcast, the idea that what you put out is what you get back could very well be how the universe does indeed work. And that we can even understand it like that scientifically too. If this is the case, would that be enough for you to show more gratitude in your life?
Author Joe Vitale, who featured in The Secret, recommends using gratitude as a way to turn around negative thinking. Instead of focusing on our problems and complaints, focus on all the things in your life that you feel grateful for and feel good about, no matter how small. This will start shifting your mind-set into a more positive direction. In fact, you could begin the day with a short exercise of running through all of the things that you are grateful for. This way you can set off into the day ahead in a more positive place.
When things begin to show up in your life, which are positive but maybe not fully what you wanted, instead of falling into old habits of disappointment, criticism, or despair, follow this three-part pattern instead. Acknowledge what has just showed up in your life, appreciate it for what it is, and then allow it to happen, do not try to force it to be anything else, do not try to transform it immediately. Acknowledge, appreciate, and allow. Remember that no experience we can ever have in life comes with a built-in, pre-set meaning. We choose what things mean, often unconsciously, based on what we have experienced before, our beliefs and values, and/or our expectations. But nevertheless, nothing actually comes with built-in meaning. What this then means is that we get to choose what things mean. By acknowledging and appreciating what does show up in our lives we can then allow more of it to flow through our lives too. And also remember, on the journey to becoming more of who we want to be, we will be faced with times when things do not work out as we imagined. Most often this is about bringing to the surface beliefs or ideas which are out of alignment with the person that we say we want to be. When this happens the experience is giving us a chance to let that negative belief or idea go. It certainly won’t always feel positive, at least initially, but when this happens it is a true gift, and something to be grateful for.
As we move through our period of ritualised giving and then into the close of 2023, maybe we can take a renewed sense of gratitude with us into whatever 2024 brings.
“I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.” Eckhart Tolle
Recent Comments