Tag Archives: Gratitude

ELEVATE

Transform your cycle of chaos and become an Extropist

Leave a comment

Often we are caught in a rut and face a trial in our lives that tests our true character. As the weight of this hardship continues to bear down on us, we are left feeling despondent and down. We don’t know where to turn and we feel we are being closed in on from all around. Some people may say, “Don’t worry. Be happy”, but this misses a grave point. You should never deny an emotion. Every emotion needs to be expressed in some form. Instead, acknowledge it and see if you can transform your thinking around whatever this problem may be. Transformation can come in many different forms: through writing, painting, and movement. It doesn’t have to be artistic but in other endeavors such as sports and giving back like volunteering.

http://instagr.am/p/MJXha/

There are many different ways to transform your chaotic situations in life (See “How to Make a Mistake“) but I am here though to talk to you about one particular way different from all the ways I have mentioned. By using this technique, you create opportunities to see change and by giving yourself enough space from the weight of the situation to open yourself up to new possibilities. I am referring to the transformative power of gratitude. Gratitude is an amazing way to transform any problem because it allows us to find the hidden gems that lay dormant in something, even when we were just taking that thing for granted. Taking it for granted as something unimportant or something that was a thorn in our side. There are always moments of true beauty that exist in all of the minutia. In death, in life and in everything in between, there is always a space for us to find the gems that lie within and open us up to the transformative power that will begin to move us away from the chaotic spiral down.

When we truly give our thankful attention and energy to something, we open ourselves up to the greatest potential that exists in it. We also open ourselves to the greatest growth and the fastest path of growth or as it is known the path of least resistance. That is not saying there is no resistance, simply the least amount that we will feel. Everyone has growing pains, in all aspects of our lives: physical, emotional and mental. It is up to us to change the cycle of our lives. We get caught in the spinning downward momentum of the entropic spiral into chaos and disorder. The only way to make a change in direction is to inject enough energy into the cycle in order to, not only slow down our ultimate destination untoward chaos but also to, actually reverse the cycle’s direction all together toward an extropic upward direction.

Extropy is the opposite of entropy (downward spiral to chaos and disorder) and instead involves us moving toward greater harmonious and more organized complexity in which we have greater functionality in order, to not only handle the trials in our lives but, to flourish. We can find this magical energy through gratitude. Gratitude is the energy we inject into the system that reverses us away from chaos. It shines a light on what normally appears destructive and gives us hope and energy to work though that, which normally has left us feeling empty and alone. Gratitude fills us up with the needed motivation to move through the tough times and keeps our wits about us in order to remain conscious enough to learn the lessons and evolve. Gratitude is the energetic tool for mankind to make an evolutionary leap in consciousness. So when you are facing a trial and your faith and focus is waning, and you are feeling overwhelmed by fear, look for what you can to be grateful for. Even when you are caught within what some may consider the muck and the mire you can lift yourself high above the place you are in to be the best person you can be and move powerfully towards finding your joy.

ELEVATE

The Science of Gratitude and the Creation of Dreams

9 Comments


In getting clear on what our dream life looks like I would like to offer a suggestion on how to best create an emotional and mental space that will most certainly get you there. I say this because so often we talk about what we want and what we are going to have. We spend a lot of time and energy thinking and working hard to get to this dream place. We may even be really excited by the possibility of it but there is something that we always miss out on that has our efforts and energy get lost in the winds of time. And that is… it is so important to ensure that you are grateful for what you have NOW. 

By only being passionate and grateful for what you are getting in the future, you are not grounding yourself in the present. It is in the present moment from which we create our futures. It is the solid ground from which things grow. The material world only exists in this moment. Really think about it: What solid thing exists in the future? Nothing! It is only a possibility. What exists in the past? Nothing! It is only a memory. Even if that moment was only one second ago, you think back on say your plant one second ago, and that memory is only an electrical impulse in your brain, not a material thing. Nothing material exists in the moment outside of the present moment and so we cannot grow things from any other moment, but this moment. The only moment is now. So when you are intending on things in the future, do it from a place where you are firmly grounded in the moment of now.

Over the last hundred years scientific studies have confirmed that there is only the moment of now. Einstein said, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”  Dr. Richard Feynman, one of the most famous quantum theorists, then went onto describe that the probability of an event is determined by summing together all the possible histories preceding that event. This means that the direction of our journey through time is simply a path in space heavily influenced by our preceding actions, which makes one outcome more probable than the more fantastic journeys time might have otherwise taken us on. Therefore in conjunction with advancing theories over the decades it has been shown that each and every moment is a completely new Universe, with infinite new possibilities in its own right and it is our consciousness (thoughts and feelings) that helps bind time into what appears a simple cohesive journey. 

Why have I gone into this? Because I want you to realize that in every moment you have the ability to create your own reality. That fresh possibility exists in every moment and that moment is only now. So the way that you can direct the most probable outcome is through the sum of the histories of the event in which you are trying to create. By being grateful now for what you have and being grateful for what you WILL have, you help create the most probable sum of the event because you are trying to create an event which makes you very grateful. 

The first thing to know about guiding ourselves to our dreams is based on another quick moment of science. As shown by the Institute of HeartMath, feelings generate particular frequency patterns in our hearts and positive feelings of gratitude generate a very even sinusoidal wave, while negative emotions usually elicit quite erratic patterns. Our heart is the largest generator and emitter of frequencies in our bodies. If every moment is now (even the future) and we are trying to create a moment outside of now for the future then by harmonizing our frequencies of the moment of now with a future moment of now we are helping to couple and connect the moments of now and best create the resonant reality of our choosing. By feeling gratitude intensely we are further creating a stronger signal which will better reach and harmonize with what we are trying to create.

The second element of creation is to be committed. The more gratitude you add to your life and the future event, the greater the probability will be and the more chance you will have of reaching your dream. Every time you give thanks for both now and the future, you add another moment to the history of events that will lead to a greater summation of the probability of that event. So choose what you want now and give thanks for it and remember to give thanks always and often for what you have, because without being grateful for who you are and what you have you are negating your own creative powers and thus leaving you and the connected Universe impotent.

It doesn’t matter if you are surrounded by negativity; remember that every moment is a fresh moment of possibility, in which you can begin to change the direction of your life. You can have lost your job, lost your partner, been diagnosed with an illness, but if you choose what you want and start giving, and truly feeling thanks for what you have received and what you want to receive, you will surely have it. You can give thanks for your family and friends that surround and support you. You can feel love and gratitude for your partner and children. You can think of all that has been given to you and that has kept you alive to this moment. You can be grateful about your health. You can think about your dreams and passions. You can smile about all the things you have accomplished in life. Write them down and keep a list. If only a few every night of what you are grateful about in your day. Give thanks. Feel it and Commit to it and your dream life is surely waiting in the next moment.

ELEVATE

Love: The mirror that gives as good as it gets!

Leave a comment

You Quiet my Wild Heart
When we end with a partner we typically feel an energetic hole. Life has lost its luster and everything feels a little heavier, a little harder. We feel like there is love missing from our lives. Love is an amazing motivator and without it our inspiration can drop dramatically. We feel this loss because of our minds, not because of our hearts. Reality is very malleable, created from the world of our thoughts.

Often throughout our relationships we identify with our partner as being Love rather than realizing that Love only exists within us and that we only share our love with them. We mistakenly believe that they are our Love, rather than they are what reflects our love. We see love in our partner by the things that we do for them. By the actions that we take, by the things that we share, by the things that we say. We feel love because of the smile that we see on our partner’s faces as we show our true selves, as we become completely vulnerable and honest and real. Love is a mirror. That is why it is always said you cannot love someone until you love yourself, because you will never like the reflection you see – no matter what you do.

Love cannot be taken away from you by anyone. Love is inside you. Love is created by you. You are Love’s progenitor. You are a Love Generator. There is no one in the world, no scientist, no Super villain that has worked out how to reach inside a person and remove love from that person. If we feel a lack of love it is because we have chosen to feel a lack of love. By realizing and recentering your love in you, you create a freedom in which no other person is responsible for your love but you. So often we hand off our love to others and say: “Here! Watch this and don’t drop it!” We put all the responsibility on them to generate and nurture our love. Well that’s just not going to work! Take responsibility for your love and you will find a lot less problems in the way that you experience your relationships and you will find an even greater truth to love. You get what you give!

If you want to really experience love then it comes from what you give. Sir Isaac Newton spoke of it when he was describing the laws of all forces in the universe. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction and Love is the most fundamental force. Love by its nature is a binding force that results in a whole greater than the sum of its parts. We see its attractive force work all throughout nature under the guise of different names and equations, but it’s always pointing to the same force. Cells, people, societies, galaxies etc. – it is always the same. Love is the unifying force that creates, and we have to give to it in order to get back. It’s the only way you deserve to receive.

So ensure that you give love and you will get it back in return. Take responsibility for your love. Take responsibility for what you give and you will be treated with the same respect and love that you give. It is a law of reciprocity. Remember this! So give and you will get. The people in your life are there to help share and build the connection of love with you so that your experience of it can be the best it can be. Isn’t that worth being thankful for every single one of them?!

ELEVATE

Whale Wisdom: “Give Thanks!”

Gallery Leave a comment

Some people think that they have days where they don’t have a reason to smile, that their lives are void of love and so they look to the outside world to get it. They want people to give it to them. They want products to give it to them. They want drugs to give it to them. They look for anyway they can find it outside of themselves. But we are always FILLED with the highest potential of experiencing Love. Love is essentially an emotional experience that makes us feel whole and satisfied about who we are at that moment in our lives. Good feelings such as the feeling of love can only be felt by you. It only exists inside of you. And that leads us down a path bound for confusion when we look outside ourselves for something that only exists within.

Smile for what you are thank ful for and the world will smile with you

When we feel a lack of love in our lives it is because we are blocking love with our unconscious thinking. We say and focus on thoughts that do not serve us or make us feel good about ourselves. They are not real! Our thoughts are one a train of possibilities and its up to us to choose the reality that we want. Love is always with us and it is just about working with it in a way that serves us. One powerful way to clear the blockage and change your thinking is through Gratitude – when you give thanks for the things in your life, you open yourself up to a new way of experiencing your world and you open up the potential to get happy. Real happy! You provide an opening to see life form a different angle; you have found an altered state of consciousness. So get high on thanks!

Life is a realm of parallel realities. There is so much going on in the one scene of your life in this moment that you can’t possibly be aware of it all. So you get to choose upon what you focus on. Some realities that you focus on won’t serve you and leave you feeling unsatisfied, whereas others will leave you feeling filled to the top with love. Our brains can be set to look for and connect to things that are at our emotional frequency. For instance sad people connect to more slower emotionally heavier songs whereas happier people will tend to connect to upbeat and livelier songs. So start with gratitude and you will preset your brain to an awareness that will allow your mind to be attracted to those things going on around you that are at the same emotional frequency of what you were grateful for. You will be attracted to focussing on all the wonderful thing that will leave you feeling satisfied and you will have gained control of a large part of what leaves you sad and empty. Your smile will be contagious as you connect with people on your emotional frequency and your Joie de vive will lift people up to your level rather than have them pull you down to theirs. So give thanks for the amazing things in your life and you will have an amazing day filled with all things love surrounding you!

ELEVATE

Seek happiness and success will find you – 21 days to retrain your brain

Leave a comment

We are constantly seeing, hearing and reading about people having break downs, how our friends are feeling sad, celebrity couples ending their relationships and the world generally dissatisfied with their lives. Even Heidi Klum and Seal broke up. Seal ended it with a woman who has been consistently thought of as the most beautiful women in the world. How can someone not be happy with the most beautiful woman in the world you may ask?
We know what happiness feels like, because we have all had it but then it just seems to slip away and we are left dealing instead with stresses and pressures rather than basking in the glow of the glory of our happiness. So what is it that constantly leads us to our state of disillusionment with the world? The answer is… The view!

We keep on looking outside ourselves for happiness. Jobs, partners, possessions. However our external world only has about 10% to do with our happiness. Where we need to be looking is at the 90%. This is where the real view is: our inner world. We spend all our time trying to fix up what we see in that outside 10% and leaving the large majority of how we see the world from the inside as unkempt and in disarray. How do we beautify and create an amazing internal landscape? How do you change your thinking?

Oddly enough your happiness and success doesn’t really have anything to do with your head, it has to do with your heart. Back in medieval times the heart was considered the center of consciousness and there may be good reason to start giving some thought to that again. 75% of personal success and happiness has been shown to be accounted for by three things: 1) Optimism, 2) Social Support and 3) Your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat. These three things are what you need to be looking at rather than your bank account and the car you have or the job title or partner that you are showing off currently. This is where our focus is backwards.

Every time we reach a success, we are aware of an even better goal that we want to reach. Got a job, want a better job. Got a car, want a better car. Got a trophy, want a bigger one. The end points are constantly shifting, like trying to catch a rainbow. Happiness seems to be sitting on the other side of that rainbow but this is really a hamster wheel that leaves you eternally chasing. The real truth about happiness is the exact opposite to what we think it is. We have to reach happiness first in order to find success. And lucky for us psychologists and scientists have found some simple exercises that utilize those three elements of optimism, social support and reframing stressors in order to retrain our brains to be able to look at the world and change the view to leave us happy and in control of our lives.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. Albert Schweitzer (1875 –1965) Nobel Peace Prize Winning Medical Missionary

Change you brain in 21 days

Every evening, for the next 21 days:

• Write down 3 things you were grateful for. This starts to retrain your brain to begin to look for those things that leave you feeling good.

Every morning for the next 21 days, rotate each day between these following 3 things:

1) Write a journal entry recalling something good that happened the day before.
• This allows you to relive and remember that your life is filled with good experiences.
2) Meditate – Sit cross-legged with your back against the wall for 15 minutes and only focus on your breath going in and out your nose. Notice as your mind gets caught on a thought and then bring your mind back to your breath.
• This allows to teach your body that behavior matters and helps train your mind to focus on one thing rather than your mind bouncing around.
3) Perform a random/ conscious act of kindness – Send a friend in your social circle a thank you note. Buy someone you don’t know a coffee. Invite a friend out to lunch.
• This will remind you that you are not alone in this world, but that you are loved and you are a relevant member of society. By giving you will open yourself up to receive and you will gain much greater insights into your life and your happiness

EXPLORE

Spawning creativity. Borrowing genius

2 Comments

A busy morning, a gaggle of gentlemen, the sound of traffic loudly impresses its presence as each person struggles to hear one another over the ambient sounds. There is one difference today to their meeting… they talk as if they were back in the French Salons of the early 18th century. Amongst them are the great minds of the enlightenment who together in a soup of genius spawned many of the fundamental ideas that built the foundation of today’s society. We call these ideas inspired, and the men, genius for they certainly were, but there was something else that they often don’t talk about and we are rarely aware of it.

As we look back at these men and their creations, many of these inspired ideas did not come from a single source, but in fact from a plethora of ideas spun together over countless hours of idea pondering with their peers, past and present. We often find ourselves ruminating over a thought and then we speak to someone about something unrelated and we creak open another moment closer to realizing the truth of our insight. We read or hear something and our minds open themselves again to it even more. The idea is like Michelangelo’s David, Mike always saw him there in the stone but instead of the hand of the great maestro our ideas come from a thousand hands chipping away at revealing the idea until finally it is revealed by the one man who laid the seed.

Your creativity is literally mental intercourse. It is bringing together two separate ideas from different sources and having them intermingle and spawn a new modified version of the idea. Then from another source an idea comes along and again infuses and impregnates to create another and even more unique form. This may go on and on over time, you are constantly nurturing an idea, this time instead of in a belly, it is inside your mind. It changes form, becoming completely unrecognizable from when you first had the seed of the thought, but you love it even more. Finally without even realizing it, you feel something snap, it comes rushing like water but its something else. It comes unexpectedly but you knew it lay on the horizons… The idea you’d been waiting for!!! How wonderful.

A feeling of elation comes over you and you are filled with such hope and excitement for what lies before this new thing that you have birthed. And so we must give thanks as we remember that it is through our mental intercourse and our mutual respect and love for our peers, past, present and future that they too are the shared progenitors of the ideas that we spawn.

And by the way, once we birth the idea then we have to give to get it up on its feet…………………………… But that’s a whole other story!

Uncategorized

How to Make a Mistake

Leave a comment

Often we feel overwhelmed by a situation. We have done everything right but still our plans go awry. We look around us and blame it on the world. This person screwed me; the conditions were not right; etc. And saying this is fine. Sometimes it might be smarter to drop something and forget about it. But sometimes it may be worth stopping for a moment and looking at the situation, and asking yourself whether you can take responsibility for what happened?

Taking responsibility reveals the lesson

It is only when we take responsibility for something do we provide ourselves the opportunity to change the outcome. If you refuse to look at the outcome and say it was someone else’s fault you will never be able to properly see what went wrong and understand how to solve the problem and learn the lesson. It has been said that “What we resist persists, and what we look at goes away”. So maybe you can see that as you open yourself to something rather resisting it, the problem might fall away when you realize that maybe it wasn’t a problem. Maybe what happened was exactly what needed to occur in order for you to move forward and grow into the person that you dreamed of becoming. We live in a society where we have been taught that to make a mistake is “bad”. We spend our whole lives trying to be right but here is something we all need to learn, being right all the time is actually “bad” and learning how to make a mistake in a constructive way is actually so right you wouldn’t believe.

Mistakes you want to make

It has been shown that taking yourself to the limit where you make mistakes is the greatest way to learn, if you deal with the lesson appropriately. Instead of reacting, slow down. Don’t take the mistake as a failure, as a personal attack on your sense of self-worth, but realize that this is one step closer to reaching your goal. This mistake is not an error but instead an opportunity to learn. The more our minds and bodies create impulses that experience and overcome difficulties, the better we will be able to handle these problems in the future. The better we handle problems, the faster we can deal with them to the point where they are no longer problems but a momentary challenge, just like the way a baby learnt to walk. At first even crawling was a serious problem but eventually the baby learnt how to crawl, and then how to steps. Walking suddenly became only a challenge and ultimately it was so automatic that not only did the baby not have to even think about walking, but as the child grew up it could do things like running and surfing as easily as breathing. Without these mistakes the baby would have never made it past the first step.

Outside of now

So ask yourself could this problem be a part of your lesson in order to reach your goals. Try looking at the situation from a higher perspective, one that is outside of only the present moment. Instead think about what this experience means to you in a year’s time or five years time. Now look back and look at how relevant this problem in the scheme of your life that has been. By looking at the problem at hand as a lesson to learn rather than a mistake, you create your space as the actor not the reactor of your life.

Acting or reacting

When you react, you are reacting from an emotional space. There is a difference between feelings and emotions. You actively generate your feelings. Feelings guide your actions powerfully and are the best space to make decisions from as they come from a place of control and clarity. Feelings can take form when you practice gratitude. Give thanks for what you have and where you are in your life and give thanks for your dream and what you are trying to create. Even try and appreciate yourself. Name five things you are thankful for about yourself. (Learn more about gratitude in “Gratitude gets you Zen Continue reading How to Make a Mistake →

ELEVATE

Creating the next step

Leave a comment

Many times in our life we are at a cross-roads of what to do. So we pick a direction on what feels right, and “good”, and we take a step for the best. However there are times when we have absolutely no idea of where to go and what to do. So often we are given the question, “what do I want?”. What do I want? What do you want? and so often we are left with no answer. We know there is somewhere to go that isn’t where we are but where is that?

Well here are some things to help. First of all get grateful for where you are currently. You can’t change your emotional frequency to a higher place (and move to a better place in your life) if you are not on a solid ground of appreciation. Appreciation is key to opening yourself to the possibilities of your dream life. Why you might ask? The trick is that you are readying your mind to be aware and take notice of the positive potential in your life, rather than the negative things that surround. Its like when you are buying a car, suddenly the car that you are thinking about buying – you are seeing on the road all around, all the time. The same works for your emotional state. If you are happy, you have prepped your mind to firstly be aware of those positive situations that exist around you. The easiest way to get positive is to get grateful.

Find what serves you in your current situation, what you are grateful for. If you are having trouble seeing the good in your life because of your surroundings, try to reframe the perspective of those around you. You need to get a better view of where people are coming from in order to find what you can appreciate about them. Who are they? What is their situations? Where are they coming from? It may help get clear on the true beauty inside them?

Next put the question out to the infinity of the Universe of what you want. Just ask “What do I want?”. The answer is sure to come if you stay aware and listen inside yourself. notice what things people say around you and you will feel things that resonate positively. Next you take action to get you there. Please note it is not important how you get there but the answers that come to your mind may provide ideas for your next step. The conscious mind is an extremely limited processor, only really able to process things one at a time. The mind only ever properly allows us to see the next step. It is our heart that sees all the way to our dreams. So keep your mind on the next step and your heart well out in front. Now imagine yourself in the role of your dreams. What things would you be doing if you had your dream? How would you be feeling emotionally if you had your dream? Create a space in your life as if your dream existed. The Universe naturally wants to fill that space. The great quantum physicist, Niels Bohr stated, “Nature abhors a vacuum”. You create a space as if something exists and the natural workings of the universe have to fill that space. That’s all the action you have to take. Some call it coincidence, others synchronicity or serendipity. Whatever it is, it works!

Trust in the Universe and trust in yourself. Find patience and love for where you are and where you are going and don’t try to tell the universe how to get you to your dream but instead notice the signs and movements of the world around you and let yourself flow with what it presents. Good luck and enjoy the journey.

As Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi says, “At first the ends justifies the means , but in the end the means justify the end.” Which means you may think that the job is what will make you happy but in the end you will realize it was all you did to get there that was most rewarding 🙂

ELEVATE

Shifting paths – Shifting lives

Leave a comment

With any relationship, we walk beside that person on our own path. Often these paths will ride along each other adjacently, but over time these paths will eventually change and diverge as the people creating these paths change. We see them over yonder in the distance but it can be so tiresome yelling the whole time so that they can hear and often so much gets lost in translation by something as simple as the wind catching our words and carrying them away. We can often be resistant to change as the familiarity is so easy and safe. We become used to this concept of who we are in relation to that person and wrap ourselves in that fabric of “this person’s partner” or “that person’s friend” so that we can then present ourselves to the world in such a way that we feel good about.

It is important to note though that as the paths get off track we have a choice: we can either acknowledge that the path has changed and we will feel to work to build new paths that will bring us back together or we can acknowledge that we don’t feel to put the added energy into building the path to be walking side by side again. The point is that either way is fine and that as long as we can see the person for the amazing person that they are on their path, and that it doesn’t necessarily reflect the direction of your path, you will not hinder yourself from creating a pathway to a life filled with friends that may be going the same direction as you now. By resisting that person you will find that you wont move forward to creating a life of new friends as you are spending your time focusing on that relationship that didn’t work. It is in this that you will then naturally create a cycle, a pattern of relationships, which you have unconsciously created in your life so that you can finally be fine to let them go or resolve. The point is that you can only create anew from the present not the past. The past begets the past the past, the present begets the future. We don’t need to regret the past but embrace it for it both helped us be the people that we are today and at the same time it know longer exists. So why not cherish the experiences that you shared for all that they gave you and you grew through.

I have included this video of Christian the Lion as i feel that while the characters of this amazing story had to go there different paths they truly retained their love for each other from all that they gained from each other.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btuxO-C2IzE&feature=related]

The final point I would like to make is that we assume that our friendships are old because we have known someone for a long time. We assume that we know that person. But every time we come back to that person we are creating a friendship completely anew because we are completely different people. When we try to maintain a relationship on the falsities of the past rather than the reality of the present we will ultimately lose our way with these partners because we take them for granted and miss out on seeing who they are now as they can do with us. So look into your friends eyes and see who they really are today and acknowledge and appreciate them for that. You will see who that person is today and if you look deep enough you will see from this present moment, who they will be tomorrow.

Hope this helps 🙂

EXPLORE

Gratitude gets you Zen

Leave a comment


When I was taking some time from my past relationship, I noticed I would feel bad when I tried to not think about her. I felt that this was not an effective method to help me deal with the changing shape of our relationship, for as we know what you resist persists. So I sat there and tried something different. I sent her gratitude for the amazing person that she is, for all the good times that we had and the lessons that she taught me. I immediately felt better and I wasn’t sure why until this moment and this is the lesson that I learnt about part of what gratitude’s power is.

Gratitude keeps us in the present.

Being present is the most important thing. The power in the Now.  In the present moment, the problems and patterns of the past have no avenue to creep in, and they have no way of imposing themselves on the future. When we are in gratitude it is impossible to be in any other moment but the present. Gratitude is an active state of being. It must be consciously acknowledged for it to be gratitude. If we don’t do it consciously it is being “taken for granted”.

We can feel joy unconsciously, like when we are eating something and it makes us feel good. However we can go through the meal without truly appreciating it, without truly being conscious and aware of the meal. That is why we suddenly finish and think, I can’t even remember eating that meal. That poor meal was taken for granted.  Once we acknowledge something and give it thanks, we are living in the present moment of now, and then we are truly living.

Gratitude is the most powerful mediation.

Gratitude is the quickest and easiest way to reach a truly meditative state. The true meditative state is when you can be completely present in the moment. The best way to be present is through appreciation, because you are not limiting anything. You are being completely accepting. Through this unadulterated acceptance, it opens you up to an even greater experience and expression of life. Gratitude is the in-breath of love. When we breathe in, during meditation, and give thanks as well, we are doubling the focus and meditative power of being present. It is for this reason that we can immediately find ourselves in a place of harmony. Harmony occurs not only in our bodies but also with the world around us. The Institute of HeartMath, a research group in California, has conducted studies on the power of using gratitude with breathing meditation.  Their results have been astounding. Through the use of gratitude, it has been shown that many of our biological systems have harmonized finding a physiological resonance that creates a form of visceral symphony. Our heart, lungs, hormones and even our brain all our working to the driving beat of the gratitude playing in our hearts.

Gratitude transforms fear

Unconscious joy is an opportunity lost but not as much as when we are in fear, which is true unconsciousness. Fear results in a true lack of appreciation and a true lack of consciousness. In fear we have no way of being present, instead we are truly locked in the patterns of the past and future and not “being in the present”. Our fear is similar to a fog that we are lost in. When you think of an experience that you are saying no to, that you are resisting, that you say is wrong, you feel it in your body and get lost in a spiral of thoughts.

Thinking those fear thought spirals, perpetuate cycles and reoccurring themes in your life. This is because you fall into the patterns of the past that you experienced when you were younger and your mind takes you down that road trying to protect you. It is inbuilt to humans to have this inclination towards the negative. It evolved for our protection and is referred to as the ‘negativity bias’. The negativity bias means that it is easier to think about the bad things and process them more quickly than the good things. This is so that if the bad things happen we will know what to do quicker to protect ourselves. That is all good and proper when we were cave men but the problem is that now we live in a World where dinosaurs and monsters don’t exist. But our bodies still think they exist so it is constantly trying and create them.

I’ll use horror films to explain this. Isn’t it interesting how in horror films the monster is so much scarier when we don’t see it, but finally when we the monster is revealed, we think, “Is that all?! That’s so fake!” It’s because our minds are programmed naturally to think the worst of the scene and the more we resist it and say “No” to the monster the scarier it gets. But the second we look at it, it immediately loses most of its scariness. The reality of the monster has taken form and thus collapses the infinite possibilities of scariness into only one possibility. It is because of this reason that we also recreate the patterns of our past, because “better the devil we know”. We know how story is going to end when we continually replay the same story and we know that while the monster is scary because we know what form it takes we are more inclined to deal with that monster than the other millions of monsters that can exist out in the world. But if we take a plunge and step into the darkness and unknown we may find that we slay the dragon and find an ending that better suits us.  So a powerful way of navigating through the unfamiliar territory of this new story is send the scary scene “Thanks”. Find all that you can be grateful for in the scene. Be grateful for all the amazing outcomes that can and will happen as you work through the darkness and you will give yourself a light to guide your way to a scene of something that you can love. You can even invite your fears to come along with you and work at your goals together. By doing this you know longer are denying the existence of your fears, which is the best way to let them go because what we resist persists and what we look at goes away.

Use your attitude of gratitude and you will find your way through any dark spot.