Us in Washington D.C.

Gratitude.

No fancy subtitles, no play on words, no keyword-stuffed headline for the search engines to latch onto…

Just a feeling of gratefulness, nothing more. s9wft5nyb3

A moment ago I sat down at my computer to do some work, and as I was settling into my chair I was overcome by a sensation of gratefulness, a gratefulness that I could literally feel flowing through my body like a soft, gentle ocean wave.  I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sink into the emotion that I was feeling. As I surrendered to this blissful experience, an image of my wife asleep in the other room appeared in my mind’s eye.

YES! I thought, I am so grateful for the love and support of my wife. I cherish her, and the truth is that her love is a huge part of the abundance that I am grateful for each and every day. She encourages me, she lifts me up, and she is pretty good at giving me a kick in the rear when I need it.

This got me to thinking about some of the other things that I’m grateful for, and I have to tell you, that between my wife and my daughter I have been blessed with more love than I sometimes feel I deserve.

But, and this is what I wanted to share with you, as I was sitting there letting my thoughts go from one thing to the next, I realized that I was grateful for feeling grateful. That’s right, I was grateful for feeling grateful.

Let me explain. When I allow myself to truly appreciate the good things in my life it is easy to move into that abundance mindset that energizes me and keeps me focused on creating the life that I desire. It is easier to avoid the distractions and temptations that could keep me from doing the important things that I have already decided are important. When I am feeling appreciative and grateful I feel abundant. I feel alive. I feel connected to my purpose and to my intentions.

As I was experiencing this wonderful feeling I knew that I had to share this important idea with you here. I know that you have probably read about gratitude before, but do you truly understand the importance it plays in your ability to create changes in your life? (By the way, click here and you can read some posts about gratitude on my old blog.)

Being grateful allows you to feel the abundance that you have in your life right now.

You might be like me and sometimes have a hard time constantly living in a mindset of abundance, especially if you are in the middle of trying to change or improve your life. The problem, and it is a common problem, is that you are approaching the process of change from a mindset of lack, rather than one of abundance. If you focus on the lack in your life, that will be all you see. If, instead, you choose to focus on those things that you are grateful for you will find yourself seeing all kinds of abundance in your life right now. Not only that, you will also begin seeing more opportunities for abundance to come into your life.

Why? Because that is what you focused on. Whether you ‘believe’ in the principles behind the law of attraction or not, I think you can see that unless you are focused on something that it won’t come into your life, right? I mean, you aren’t going to lose thirty pounds by accident, you aren’t going to get a big fat raise by accident, no one is going to leave a brand new sports car in your driveway by accident.

Focus on abundance and you will subconsciously be looking for more ways to bring the abundance you desire into your life. Focus on lack and you will subconsciously be looking for more ways to acknowledge the areas of your life that you feel are lacking in something. Which is a better way to spend your time and energy?

Expressing your gratitude is an excellent way to get in touch with your sense of abundance, and spending a moment or two each day writing down those things you are grateful for right now is a simple way to do just that. It’s an exercise I use in most of my workshops and is great for helping you focus on what is really important to you.

So today I thought I would use my blog to jot down a few things that I’m grateful and thankful for right now.

• My wife, Donna. I already mentioned how much her love and support mean to me.
• My daughter.  She brings a lot of joy into my life
• Princess, our cocker spaniel. I don’t have to look far to see an example of total and unconditional love.
• Finally, I am grateful for all of my new friends that I met this past weekend at jvAlert in Washington D.C.  Donna and I drove down for the weekend event and had a wonderful time and met some incredibly warm and giving people. It was our first time attending an internet marketing seminar and we had a lot of fun.

You see? Making a gratitude list is easy. In fact, you can do it right now! Just leave a comment below and share a couple of things that you are grateful for right now. Go ahead. It’s painless and it will help you get in touch with your true sense of abundance!

Peace,

p.s. Don’t forget to make gratitude a daily activity. Posting a comment here is great, but your real power comes from writing down those things you are grateful for on a regular basis.

p.p.s I’ll be talking about gratitude on this week’s radio show. You can listen to Growing Your SELF live Wednesday evening at 8pm eastern. Won’t you join me?