“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend…when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present—love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure—the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach
In Buddhism, it is said that we are each born with the “seed potential” of all possibilities and that it is the seeds we nurture with our energy of focused attention that come to fruition. It is no secret that what we focus our attention upon rises in the field of our awareness and tends to become part of our experience. In challenging times, often the tendency is to stare at what seems to be missing rather than the good that lies right in front of us. Practicing conscious gratitude activates and directs the creative energy of life that nurtures the seed potential within which contains the spiritual DNA of a life worth living.
For most of us, practicing conscious gratitude is not something we generally remember to do. Why? Because we are so easily seduced by the collective consciousness of humankind that is obsessed with looking down—staring at what is wrong or missing in our lives.
We can transcend the vortex and gravitational pull of the collective consciousness with the conscious practice of gratitude—it’s just a matter of remembering to remember. William A. Ward wrote, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say, ‘Thank you?’” When you think about it, a second or two is all that takes to practice gratitude. Who doesn’t have at least a few seconds to spare each day for such a powerful practice? Every day, we have an opportunity to express gratitude and to build an attitude of gratitude.
How Do We Begin Our Gratitude Mind Garden?
As we move into this holiday season consider creating a 30-day Gratitude Journal. Take a few moments each day to consider three things that you currently have in your life for which you are grateful—things that will help raise the altitude of your attitude of gratitude. Each day for 30 days, add three new awareness’s of gratitude—and try not to repeat the same thing twice—keep the list fresh and growing. Accumulatively, at the end of 30 days you will have have a cornucopia of acknowledged blessings for which to be grateful. If you find yourself thinking you are running short of blessings, consider the following:
When was the last time you gave thanks for your heart that keeps on beating, or your teeth that allow you to chew your food, or your eyes, legs, feet and toes? (Did you know that without your toes you could not stand; you would fall flat on your face?) How about the roof over your head, or the cool, clean water you have to drink? What about the warm water with which you bathe—or the hot water in which you wash the very dishes you just used to fill your stomach with food, or the country in which you live?
When you really think about it your gratitude list could go on indefinitely. That is how blessed you really are. If you begin the Journal on Thanksgiving, it will take you into the weeks of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas soaring on high with gratitude. (NOTE: To save you the effort of creating one, I invite you to go to my website for a FREE download of a Gratitude Journal. Click here to download link. Included in the journal are the instructions on how to use it.)
It has been said that with clear intention a new habit can be formed in three to four weeks. What better habit could we have than to live daily, naturally focusing on what is good about our lives? In other words, with a little effort “thanks living” can become a conscious practice every day of the year—we don’t have to wait until the fourth Thursday in November each year to be reminded of how blessed we truly are. Perhaps Meister Eckhart put it most simply and eloquently when he wrote, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.” I encourage you to join with me in making “thank you” your mantra for the next thirty days and witness how blessed you really are.
Your 86,300 seconds begin now!
Peace,
Dennis
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