Wanting What You Have

We are often told to feel and express gratitude as a way of being happier and a way of practicing the law of attraction. The law of attraction simply says that what you think and feel is what you get. So it follows that if you are feeling grateful for something you have or something you have experienced, then your thoughts and feelings are positive ones of appreciation, which then create more of the same in your life. For example, if you are very grateful for a loving, kind friend, it sets you up to receive more loving kindness. If you are grateful for the money you have, it sets you up energetically with the Universe to receive more and to have plenty of money. The thoughts and feelings of gratitude are the key to this, not the things you received themselves.

So how does this gratitude thing work? First, when you are feeling gratitude, then you NOT feeling anger, resentment, sadness, or angst of any kind. You are feeling and thinking positive thoughts and feelings. So when you are not feeling the negative emotions, you must be ... happy! Okay, gratitude may not equate to happiness for you, but it is positive. Second, gratitude is one of the highest (most positive) emotions vibrationally that you can have. You've gone straight to a home run, rather than lingering on first base. Third, it is the very opposite of wanting, grasping, feeling lack, needing, feeling greedy, etc. When you feel gratitude, you know in your deepest heart that you have what you want and need and you recognize it through your gratitude.

So how does one generate gratitude? For some of us it comes naturally. Maybe we've been trained that way or maybe it's our nature. But all of us can feel and express gratitude. If it doesn't come naturally, then practice it. I suggest writing out your "gratitudes" each day. At first they may not flow freely. But with practice, they come to mind more easily and you will find that some of the things you "think" you are grateful for, actually generate the emotion of "gratitude". For example, on my list might be "I'm grateful for a steady supply of electricity so that I can write this newsletter, that my husband makes smoothies each morning and serves them to me in a tall glass, that I have a top notch computer, that one of my grandchildren is able to visit me often, and so on." Now some of these do not elicit much emotion, they are just thoughts. For example, the gratitude for electricity was a thought, but didn't change my emotions; however, the longer I thought about it and what it would mean to do without electricity, to be in the dark, to not have all the tools we use daily (refrigerator, computer, phone, lights), the more grateful I become for it. The thoughts generated the emotion. The thought about my grandson generates an immediate emotion of gratitude. So from these examples, you can see that some gratitudes you may have to play with a bit to actually feel the gratitude. The important thing to remember is that we must FEEL the gratitude not just think it. It is the feeling of appreciation that is the key to feeling happier and to having more of what we really want.