Gratitude, The Gateway
The energy of gratitude is one of the most powerful and underappreciated keys to success and overall happiness. It's so powerful that it can change your mood and negative emotions about a situation in an instant, and ultimately end up changing your life. It's the key to seeing the glass half full rather than half empty.
If you are feeling down about a situation, the way to change your mood is to change your thoughts and perspective. Thoughts trigger emotions. If negative emotions go unchecked for too long, they can end up causing us to make poor decisions that lead to a domino effect of negative occurrences and outcomes.
During a challenging time, the key is to train your mind to focus on gratitude. It's not easy to do, especially when we tend to be consumed with the negative emotions of an event. We also tend to want to bring others into the mix and give our misery company. All of this is useless. It doesn't do anything but expand our negative emotions about the situation, and it changes nothing. It can be very challenging to mentally will your thoughts to something positive. But like anything, the more you do it, the easier and better you will become at it. Like a muscle, you are strengthening and reconditioning your mind for your best and highest good.
The trick is, the second you catch yourself in a toxic spiral of negative thoughts and emotions, use your discipline and willpower to change your thoughts. You do this by thinking about all of the things you are grateful for. Start listing them in your mind and really connect to the feelings and emotions of what you're grateful for. What you're doing is creating a healthy distraction away from negativity. Most importantly, on a spiritual level, you are connecting with God and his love for you. You are giving thanks and praise to God for all that you have. Your heart is full thinking about the blessings you have, rather than what you don't have. Before you know it, you have pulled yourself out of misery and low-vibrational energy and into peace, unification, and acceptance. This is how you work with the Divine. You bring your thoughts and energy up to a high vibrational state and allow God to strengthen your desire for happiness through your decision and effort of practicing gratitude.
You're not only instantaneously changing your attitude and outlook on the situation, but you are training and reconditioning your mind. Otherwise, if you never practiced gratitude, you wouldn't appreciate anything for very long. You would be on to the next best thing, looking for that thing or person to bring you happiness. It's especially important in today's society, where instant gratification is at our fingertips. If you've noticed, it's fleeting. To maintain a constant sense of peace and happiness, you have to cultivate gratitude. Once this is practiced and set in motion on repeat, within time, you will end up transforming yourself and your life!
You're elevating your thoughts and your mind to a higher frequency that will no longer entertain low-vibrational energy. You will see life as beautiful and magical, and no longer as a struggle. Things will start to flow to you effortlessly because you have opened the door for it. You are now attracting those higher vibrational people, places, and things by being grateful for what you do have.
Book Recommendation: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
