Inviting Goodness and Grace Through Gratitude

Gratitude is something that never goes out of season and can be seen as spiritual practice that softens our energy, heals our mind, opens our heart, and aligns us more directly with our soul.  With that being said, as the holidays approach, I believe it is a powerful time to start, or uplevel, our practice of active appreciation. 

A partial list of the benefits of cultivating gratitude includes: healing our relationships; strengthening our bodies; increasing compassion; resolving guilt; dissolving shame; mending our broken hearts; and align us more directly with Source. Gratitude can also invite prosperity, opportunities, grace, ease, comfort, AND usher miracles into our lives.

How can gratitude do all of this? As we surrender any thoughts of victimhood, and quit hanging on to grievances, as we let go of any notion that we are small, less important than others, unworthy or weak, and as we surrender judgment, we uproot the toxic weeds in the garden of our lives and start to make space for the flowers we really want.

If we look a half empty glass with anger, judgement and frustration, it will drain the glass til it is completely empty. When we start to appreciate the half full glass, the glass will begin to fill up, and eventually overflow with blessings.

                                                                                                                                                                                      

Consciously considering gratitude can transform traffic jam torture into a helpful healing retreat.  It can make a bad situation tolerable, and a good situation great. Gratitude can turn a hovel into a sanctuary, and a challenge into an adventure. A loss into a learning, and illness into healing. Appreciation can transform anxiety into equanimity, pain into peace, pushing into patience, and hurt into hope. When we give up expectation and instead focus on appreciation, our energy is transformed, and therefore so will be our lives.  

When we turn our attention away from focusing on what is bad, sad, wrong, what hurts us, and makes us angry, AND INSTEAD pay more conscious attention to what is good, right, positive and what our soul is learning, we increase our wattage and uplevel our vibration.  And because like attracts like, and because water always finds its own level, it is spiritual law that what we manifest from this space will FEEL better, LOOK better, and BE better.

When you change the way you look at things, what you look at changes. 

Why am I such an advocate and proponent of gratitude? And how do I know it works? Because it has been the key ingredient in healing my body and health, my finances and prosperity, it has helped reveal my life’s purpose, it has healed my relationships, and help me attract the love of my life.

Body Issues: Instead of continuing to be mad at my body for weighing too much and not being healthier, I started to actively appreciate it. Subsequently I started to naturally drop the extra weight and my health improved.

Money: When I stopped complaining about my money struggles and started appreciating all of the examples of prosperity in my life, my finances started to increase. 

Life purpose: When I stopped saying “I am confused, what am I supposed to be doing?” and started appreciating each day, and each person in front of me, the fog started to lift. Opportunities and amazing people “miraculously” started to appear. I believe everyone’s life purpose is about love, and can start to be revealed through the practice of gratitude.

Relationships: When I complained about being abandoned and betrayed, I attracted more people who abandoned and betrayed me. As I told my sad story others, I received a lot of pity. On some level I wanted to be perceived as the innocent victim.  When I meditated about this situation I got this message: “You cannot move forward with grace and attract goodness, as long as you are looking at your past with grievances.”  I got it.  I had to give up my story, I also had to start looking at it differently. Gratitude helped me do this.

It took me a while to compile the list, but this is what I came up with:

~ I am grateful for the soul level learnings from this relationship.

~ I am grateful for the experiences and the laughter, for the good times and the fun.

~ I am grateful to learn more about creating boundaries and cultivating discernment.

~ I am grateful to have experienced things I do not want, so that I can become more clear about what I do want.

As I embarked on my gratitude practice, it helped turn the tides of my life from feeling powerless and small, to feeling empowered and peaceful.

Greed, whining, being a victim, and entitled is a fear-based REPELLING energy. Gratitude, appreciation, being empowered,and gracious is a love-based ATTRACTIVE energy.

As I started to live a life of greater gratitude, I attracted people that lived from this beautiful space as well. This is how I attracted true love and my amazing husband. And when people ask why this relationship works, I say, because I lead with appreciation every day.

Consider this scenario: You have two friends. You give them both a small thoughtful gift for the holidays. One of your friends responds by saying “Oh my goodness, this is so lovely! Thank you for thinking of me, I am so touched and so very grateful!” Then they send you a nice thank you card in the mail.  Feels nice huh? 

The second friend, opens the gift and says: “Oh, well, I already have one. I would have preferred something else. I don’t really like it, I hate this color.” Does not feel so nice huh? If this was their constant attitude, who would you want to spend more time with? 

The bottom line is everything in the Universe (including the Universe) responds more favorably to appreciation and positivity then judgment and negativity: animals, children, plants, our bodies, our finances, and our relationships. In other words, all of life.

We all have a choice, we can focus on the dust on the table, or the rose in the vase

If you are ready to say yes to a life of greater goodness, grace, graciousness and gratitude here are some suggestions to get the appreciation party started.

~ Begin your day counting all of your blessings.

~ Start a gratitude journal, and at the end of the day write down EVERYTHING good that happened to you. Express appreciation for all of the things, people, situations, synchronicities and experiences you are grateful for.

~ Write a list of all of the things you like about you: your talents, gifts, body, mind, and everything that makes you unique and awesome.

~Send a letter or a card to the people that you appreciate, share with them the things that you like most about them and all that you are grateful for.

~ Write a letter of appreciation to the Universe.

~ Look for things through the day to be grateful for and appreciate.

~ Receive graciously! Say THANK YOU to everyone and everything that comes forward in your life that is a wink of kindness and/or goodness.

~ Look around your immediate environment right now and observe things to appreciate. This can include colors that are pleasing to your eye, anything of beauty, the construction and people that made the space possible, any plants, nature, gifts, art, books, letters, bills, (Yes even for this we can find reasons to be grateful!)  Find one thing at a time to appreciate and allow this appreciation to expand inside of you, growing your heart space, stretching it out and expanding your energy field to fill up the space and then ripple out to your entire home, community, family, state, nation, content, and world.

~ Write down the positive things you have learned from the challenging people and situations in your life (the truth is, there is far more soul level learning available in the tough times and challenges than the easy and effortless times). We turn the direction and momentum of our life from a downward spiral, to an upward ascent when we can find things to be grateful for in the painful,hurtful,challenging relationships and situations.This is when we extract the diamond from the coal, surrender our victim posture, claim our authentic power, and start to become a magnet for magnificence.

What you focus on increases, therefore conscious gratitude is like turning the steering wheel of your life AWAY from where you DO NOT want to go, and TOWARDS where you DO want to go.

If you can imagine a high rise building, as we are complain, feel like a victim, moan and groan, we are on a lower level floor, and we will naturally connect with other people and attract situations on this same floor and frequency. As we start to practice conscious gratitude, it is like walking into the elevator and hitting a button to go to higher level. As you walk out on this floor, you will meet and connect with higher level people and situations. This is the law of attraction  - and spiritual law!

Additionally we all manifest what we can hold for. As we spend more time expanding in gratitude, we attract more miracles, opportunities, prosperity, amazing people, beauty, joy and more.  I guarantee there is no downside, only upside, to experimenting with this healing practice. 

When we are in gratitude, we attract even more to be grateful for. 

Gratitude is the surest way I know to change your vision of the world. It is how we take off those old, outdated prescription lenses and put on the new, updated clear lenses so you see your life in a more beautiful, empowered, accurate, optimistic and joyful way! 

If you are skeptical, I invite you to give it a try for just one week. I am confident you will start to feel more comfortable in your skin, less stressed, more optimist, AND start attracting more great opportunities.  

When we reside more consistently in a state of gratitude, our life start to unfold with less effort and more grace. We naturally attract people and situations that assist us in reaching our highest purpose and potential. Get the in the habit of saying thank you, thank you, thank you under your breath throughout the day, try on as many of the gratitude exercises as you can and perhaps come up with some of your own (I would love to hear about them!)!

It would also be an honor to share with you my "Expanding in Gratitude Meditation" to get your conscious, subconscious and superconscious mind congruent, consistant and on board. Just email me at tammibphd@gmail.com, subject line Gratitude! And I will gift you with the Mp3.

In the meantime, thank you, thank you, thank you, for taking the time for to read my blog, and for being part this energy of appreciation.  Know I am holding you in my heart, meditation, and prayers. I am also sending you blessings of grace, ease, kindness, sweetness, appreciation, gratitude, respect, and great love.  

Tammi Baliszewski, Ph.D.

www.tammibphd.com

tammibphd@gmail.com