“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.”—Rumi
Studies show the power of gratitude. For example, the Greater Good Science Center, with Robert Emmons of the University of California, Davis, launched in 2011 Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude (ESPG).
https://ggsc.berkeley.edu/what_we_do/major_initiatives/expanding_gratitude/about_project
They found gratitude improves sleep, well-being, happiness, relationships, and more.
Gratitude also changes your focus away from what’s wrong and can connect you to solutions your soul knows.
Try expressing gratitude daily and often for everything you can think of; what you’re experiencing, your good qualities, all the good in your life (even minor things), the good that will be, spiritual help, and more.
Feel gratitude for the privilege of being alive, too. We’re programmed from birth to have high expectations for our love lives, career, finances, friendships, family, and so on. When you focus on gratitude for simply being alive, life becomes more interesting and less stressful.
Tip: Gratitude is especially helpful when you’re feeling stuck or negative. Switch negative thoughts to gratitude whenever you catch yourself.
Tip: Gratitude also soothes emotional trauma. Focus on things for which you feel grateful when you feel down and watch your positive energy expand.
Tip: Letting go and relaxing into gratitude will help you feel it more than trying to force it out of stress.
Faith
Faith and gratitude together can be one of the most potent spiritual forces available to you, even when things are not going the way you had hoped. Express faith and gratitude often and watch your life change for the better.
Fear can break you down. Faith is the opposite of fearful thinking. Faith can have a powerful influence on your life, and a positive outcome (within the boundaries of personal fate). Some might say having faith is just wishful thinking, but sometimes healthy expectations and knowing you’ll be okay is just what you need.
Tip: Sometimes a bad feeling about something turns out to be false fears. Other times you might be intuitively perceiving problems ahead. Faith and gratitude can help you deal with either.
Tip: Instead of dwelling on fearful thoughts about your finances, career, love life, or other issues, have faith and feel gratitude that you will know what to do, and when to do it, to improve the situation. Replace the fear, every time you catch yourself, with faith and gratitude. Have faith and feel gratitude everything is going to be okay. Have faith and feel gratitude that you are being guided, and you have help from the Other Side. At the least, it will calm your mind and ease the stress. At the most, it will positively influence the outcome.
Tip: Sometimes I keep it simple for complex problems and express the following over and over to myself while feeling the gratitude and faith: “I’m so grateful God and my guides of the Light are helping me with (problem) and I know what to do.” This calms the stress, clears the confusion, and helps me know my next best step.
Key takeaway: Replacing fears with gratitude and faith can help you rein in emotions, perceive the solutions your soul knows, and improve many aspects of life.
Action steps:
1. Think of ten things for which you are grateful. Notice how you feel when you express gratitude about these things.
2. Begin the habit of expressing gratitude daily and often for everything you can think of.
3. Think of a problem that’s causing you stress. What is your fear about it? Now replace the fear with gratitude that you’ll know how to handle it. Feel grateful that you’ll know what to do at the right time, and have faith that everything is going to be okay. Express gratitude and faith whenever you think of the problem and notice how you feel.
Copyright © 2024 Stephen Petullo
