Friday, February 27, 2009

How to Find Abundant Gratitude

By Deanna Collins

Practicing the art of graciousness is powerful in your life. Focusing on the things you have keeps your mind off of what you don't have in your life. When things go wrong, it's hard to stay focused on those things. But, you can still live graciously.

Gratitude is Important

When you look at life in a grateful manner, your perspective on a lot of things begins to change. For instance, you:

Look at faults as potential blessings. It's easy to lay blame at someone else's feet and leave it there. It is a lot harder to look past someone's mistakes and see their potential. That goes for your mistakes too.

View others with an open heart rather than a closed heart. This means that you feel compassion for others regardless of whether you have anything in common with them or not. A life filled with compassion is a happy and abundant life.

Don't pass judgment on yourself or others. See people for who they are and have the potential to be. Praise them and be grateful for their strengths.

Feel merciful towards others who are not in their best place or have not reached a place where they can look at the world from a place of gratitude.

Look at what you do have and be grateful. Concentrating on the positives in your life attract more positive energies. How is that? Whatever you cultivate in your life will begin to grow. If you want a good life, change your focus.

Gain Gratitude Abundance in your Life

Always know what you are grateful for in life. If you want, make a list. Each day, read the list and add more to it as you feel the need. Some of your blessings that you may easily overlook: breathing each day, having food at every meal, and the good people in your life. Blessings are all around us if we choose to see them. Learning to recognize your blessings renews your hope in life and your role in it.

Practice. Being grateful and inviting gratitude abundance into your life isn't an overnight experience. You don't go to bed one night with the burdens of the world on your shoulders and awake the next day feeling light as a feather with no cares in the world. Gratitude, takes practice.

Use gratitude in your everyday life. Some people develop rituals to make it easier to develop a gracious spirit. Wear gratitude jewelry; get routine massages; spend time with friends; meditate; you can also use your journal. Whatever brings you positive thoughts can be incorporated into your routine.

Help others. There's little which is more profound and positive than to offer help to others. Something as simple as paying a toll for the person behind you, holding a door, and larger things like volunteering at the homeless shelter all help you to feel not only good about yourself but good about the world.

Strip away the things that you don't need in your life. Gratitude feels good and is incompatible with things that make you feel bad. Eliminate the negative and fill up on people and situations that enhance your life.

Will you accept abundance in your life? Begin by being grateful for what you have and letting it change your life. - 17943

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