I like opening the year with gratitude first. Gratitude is a universal trait of the thriving.
It’s also not dependent in the least on your current circumstances.
Your connection to gratitude directly influences how you interpret the facts of your life and your receptivity to flow with them masterfully and to activate your personal power to craft a life (and business) of purpose and meaning.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, the way I experienced gratitude in the past seemed more like a mental list of what I should be emotionally obligated to feel “happy about,” but truthfully didn’t. What I’ve learned since is that forced toleration or reluctant acceptance is a cheap knock-off of the real vibrancy of wild force and connectivity of the real thing.
Gratitude is not something you do “to yourself” or “work harder to have.” It’s an energy you allow yourself to receive. It naturally comes to you when you are in the inner stance to receive it. It’s positional.
And it is practical and potent. When the energy of gratitude is alive in your life, it simultaneously fortifies you in whatever circumstance you are engaging with the same time as it enriches the quality of the experience.
As such, the most foundational point I can make about gratitude is that it is Co-Created. Gratitude is one expression of life force, so, that part, you can’t “make yourself do.”
Your part is presence and focus. Putting yourself in a position for the energy of gratitude to arise within you.
It will come when we are in a non-resistant and open, clear state to receive.
Gratitude is the natural enlivening force that fills us when we are practicing an inner stance of
Qualitative presence (relaxed sensory awareness of body) and Focus (mastery of mind)
So, what if living with more gratitude was actually 50% about strengthening the muscle of focus and 50% about learning how to release tension at will?
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Let’s leave it there for now, shall we? See you soon for a longer Part Two. Get ready to deep dive with me.