The attitude of gratitude takes you to a higher level of happiness and this attitude is cultivated through the practice of being grateful for things, small and big, every day.
Spiritual thought-leader and founder of the International Agape Spiritual Center, Michael Bernard Beckwith says, “it’s the ability to see what has been already given to you – all the gifts of existence.”
Another day to breathe, love, laugh, hug, express your greatness, and share your gifts with the world – when you focus on what you already have with a sense of gratitude, it’s the fastest way to manifest your desires.
If you struggle to find things to be grateful for, here are 20 gifts of existence that will help remind you of how great life can be.
And if you don’t know how to practice gratitude, you can focus on one thing at a time each day until the state of gratitude becomes your second nature.
We spend way too much of our emotional energy on the two, three, or four things that are wrong in our lives (…) completely ignoring the twenty, thirty, forty, two hundred things which are pretty good in our lives.
— Srikumar Rao
Without your mind, you wouldn’t be able to think, make decisions, store memories, and come up with new ideas. It lets you make things out of the world and protects you from being overwhelmed and confused by irrelevant knowledge.
Your mind, at large, enables you to perceive the spiritual aspect of life and everything’s happening elsewhere in the Universe.
You aren’t just able to learn new things; you are able to transform through new experiences and important lessons.
It goes beyond the biological evolutionary process as humans are one of the most complex beings on this planet who can transcend human nature and reach higher consciousness.
This ability is your privilege, and you don’t want to take it for granted.
All leaves are unique. All fingerprints are unique. All faces are unique… And you — you, too, are one of a kind.
Paul G. Hewitt, author of Conceptual Physics, explains that one main reason for uniqueness is physical composition.
He says, “what many people don’t realize is that scientists have determined that in all the world, no two leaves of any plants are identical. Each is one of a kind — unique. This is astounding!”
Your body is your sacred vessel. It’s your best friend that has, is, and will always be with you.
There are thousands of processes happening within your body for you to live and experience your life. It rejuvenates and heals itself without you being aware of it.
Dr. Dain Heer affirms, “we all have the ability to create a nourishing, two-way relationship with our bodies. It begins when we listen to what our bodies have to say.”
Your body knows what it requires to be happy, healthy, and radiant. The question is, are you listening to it? Be grateful for your body and create a line of communication with it.
Do you know how powerful your heart is? Its toroidal field is more potent than your mind – it extends 8 feet around you.
In fact, the heart is the most powerful source of electromagnetic energy in the human body, producing the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field of any of the body’s organs.
You cannot see this field, but science has proven its existence. When you imagine your heart interacting with others, communicating gratitude, love, peace, empathy, and unity, it becomes resonant.
Your ability to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste – all your five senses enrich your life experiences. They allow you to see the vibrant colors of this world, hear the voices of your loved ones, smell flowers in the garden, taste different foods, touch various textures.
Scientists conclude that you can somewhat overcome losing your sense of smell, sight, taste, or hearing. But if you lose your sense of touch, you wouldn’t be able to sit up or walk. You wouldn’t be able to feel pain.
Your sense of touch is the one we often take for granted. But it’s paramount for our survival. So you can be definitely grateful for it.
Parents are our first teachers in life. Some of you may even consider them the best teachers. They taught you how to walk and speak. They gave you most of all knowledge.
Regardless of what relationships you have with your parents, there will be no you if there is no them. And being born into this world is a big enough reason to be grateful for your parents.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
– Lao Tzu
It may seem that love is nowhere to be found at times. But love is everywhere. Love is all there is, and it’s one of the biggest things to be grateful for unconditionally.
We all experience at least one type of love at some point in our lives, and even before that tangible experience, we long for love from the moment we are born.
It can be love for another person or entire humanity. It can be love for a child or a pet. It can be love for Mother Nature or the Sun.
If you haven’t experienced it yet, don’t give up on opening up your heart to it. If you have, be grateful for all the love in your life.
Friends are good for your health and wellbeing. Doctors prescribe friendship for loneliness, stress, traumas, losses, lack of confidence, and self-worth.
If you have a best friend at work, you’re “seven times as likely to be engaged in their jobs, are better at engaging customers, produce higher quality work, have higher wellbeing, and are less likely to get injured on the job,” according to Gallup.
Above it all, friends are good for your soul.
Our pets are our true soul companions. Having a pet is pure joy.
On top of that, they are our overall health enhancers. They boost our mood, reduce stress, alleviate depression, and make us more compassionate. They help us bring up our children, after all.
Scientists explain that one of the reasons for these therapeutic effects is that pets fulfill the basic human need for touch. So next time you pat your pet, remind yourself to be grateful for a special bond you have with your furry friend.
You may think that fear is the last thing to be grateful for, but it’s not. We tend to see fear as a negative emotion, but just like any other emotion, it exists for a reason.
It protects you from danger. So being fearless is virtually a dangerous attitude.
Your fears once saved you from making a reckless choice, and you can befriend your fears by seeing them as road signs which help you navigate your life.
Michael Bernard Beckwith explains that we can grow through pain when we are playing too small. He calls it a kensho moment.
“When we aren’t consciously embracing our vision and our growth and unfoldment, we primarily grow through pain,” he says. “This is when the Universe pushes us out of our small worlds because we are infinite spiritual beings.”
In other words, your painful experiences allow you to transform into your greatest version.
It may sound counterintuitive, but we often forget to be grateful for what we have achieved so far. Even at work, we focus more often on failure rather than success.
We tie our happiness to our future that makes it conditional.
If you want to untangle your happiness from any external condition, you should be grateful for all the things you’ve accomplished to become who you are now. It will boost your state of happiness and sense of gratitude for who you are.
On top of that, most of us are tricked into believing that our self-worth is connected to what we own and what we take from the world. But Michael Beckwith argues that when you leave this world, your fulfillment and satisfaction with your story come from how much you’ve grown, not how much you own.
You can thank your money regardless of how much you have. “Arigato your money” is one of the key principles of Money EQ – a concept introduced by Ken Honda, Japan’s #1 money teacher.
This is your relationship with money based on the emotions and feelings you associate it with.
Ken Honda shares that thanking your money, when they come and when they go, is a shortcut to wealth. So thanking your money is a powerful tool to be more grateful for what you already have in your life.
Eternity is a very long time. Especially towards the end.
– Steven Hawking
Time is one of the things we take for granted. But each of us exists for a short time, and only time will show how well we lived.
Even if time is an illusion, our perception allows us to manage our days better and organize ourselves. Its finite nature in terms of a lifetime teaches us to be mindful of how we spend this invaluable resource.
As long as we have time, we can change and transform. We can explore. We can love. We can enjoy the ride.
Modern utilities such as electricity, water, and gas are some of the things to be grateful for yet taken for granted.
According to the World Bank report,
Next time you pay your utility bill, thank your money and be grateful for having electricity, clean water, and gas.
According to a recent study, they save the average person 51 minutes a day, or about 13 entire days a year.
Researchers asked 2,000 people to name the top inventions that have improved our lives the most. And here is a list of things to be grateful for:
Perhaps, books are also one of the most pleasurable inventions. On top of that, reading a book can improve your mental health and increase your life.
Jim Kwik, one of the foremost experts in speed reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning, believes that thanks to books, we are able to download the decades of someone’s knowledge and expertise that they’ve put into it.
If you remind yourself of being grateful for books in our lives, perhaps, it will inspire you to read more.
A book is one of the most patient of all man’s inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye.
– Lawrence Clark Powell
Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.
– Plato
Music is omnipresent – you can hear it everywhere and it’s hard to imagine our lives without it. It’s like a time machine that can take you to any era and place at any given moment.
Music is our universal language that needs no translation or interpretation. We all understand it and connect with it in our unique ways. It’s one of the eternal things to be grateful for.
Your journey is unique, with its ups and downs, twists and turns, pains and gains. Just like there are no two identical leaves, there are no similar human experiences.
In the vastness of the Universe, you’re not even a speck of dust. But you are given an enormous privilege to have an individual experience of existence.
So be grateful for your journey and trust everything is working out for you. Because it really is.
Join Dr. Michael Beckwith in this free Masterclass to learn how to break free from societal imprinting, tap into what your soul actually wants, and start living the life you were meant to live.Reserve My Free Spot Now
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