I know you’ve heard this before, but you will be grateful you read on…

“The two most powerful feelings for quickly manifesting your goals are appreciation and gratitude.” – Jack Canfield, The Success Principles

Canfield grew up poor with an alcoholic mother and a physically abusive step-father. He has gone onto live a remarkable life touching millions through his workshops, books, and Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

What finally persuaded me to at least ‘try’ having a daily gratitude practice - after many years of hearing it recommended - was listening to billionaire Oprah Winfrey talk about how pivotal her gratitude practice was in helping her achieve such stunning success. She too came from really challenging beginnings growing up not only poor and lonely, but through the trauma of sexual molestation and resulting teen pregnancy from a ‘trusted’ family friend.

When Robin Sharma writes about the billionaires he has coached for the past twenty five years in his latest book The Everyday Hero Manifesto, he says: “They understand that what you are grateful for grows. And all you appreciate expands within your consciousness. Start celebrating all that you have been granted, however small or large – from food on your family’s table to a job that allows you to make a difference...and what you applaud will be magnified. So even more of it will flow naturally into your days.”

Want research? Steven Kotler has been studying and coaching peak performers for thirty years. In his seminal 2021 book The Art of Impossible he notes that “Unfortunately, to keep us safe, the amygdala is strongly biased toward negative information. We’re always hunting danger. In experiments run at the University of California, Berkeley, psychologists discovered that we take in as many as 9 bits of negative information for every positive bit that gets through. Nine-to-one are lousy odds under the best of conditions – and peak performance rarely takes place under the best of conditions.”

He then explains that we need a daily gratitude practice to change our brain’s negativity bias.

Joe Dispenza, one of the most popular spiritual influencers of the present day, believes that we have to take gratitude one step further and not only be grateful for what we have but also for what we want. That way we can send our intentions out to the quantum field and change something within us before we can see it turn into physical reality. Here’s part of his meditation from his most recent book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself:

“From a state of gratitude, be one with your destiny from a new state of mind and body. Give thanks for a new life…feel how you feel when these things manifest in your life, because living in a state of gratitude is living in a state of receivership. Feel like your prayers are already answered.”?

What helps me with this is I mix together what I have with what I want to have, and this helps (or confuses?!) my brain to blend them both together as real.

He explains: “When you are in a state of gratitude, you transmit a signal into the (quantum) field that an event HAS ALREADY OCCURRED. Gratitude is more than an intellectual thought process. You have to feel as though whatever you want is in your reality at this very moment.”

What’s also going on here is you are planting these thoughts into your subconscious mind so it can go to work on making it happen. This is so crucial because – according to John Assaraf in his book Innercise - “only about three to five percent of what’s happening in your brain occurs at the conscious level of awareness.” In other words, 95%-97% of the actions you take are made subconsciously during your day, i.e. with no thought put in at all.

As you influence your subconscious mind more by being grateful, you continue to attract in more of what you want by focusing on it more and then gradually taking ever more ACTION to make it happen. Make sense? It’s not an accident.

The Useful Part: What is an EFFECTIVE GRATITUDE PRACTICE

What has to happen is you have to FEEL REAL GRATITUDE in your HEART.

This is where I went wrong for years. I would go through the motions. I’d often feel in a hurry and I would scribble down some things I was grateful for but seldom would I let them sink in deeply enough to genuinely FEEL GRATEFUL.

There are two ways to have a gratitude practice. Make sure it lasts at least 5 minutes and preferably 10. Start with 30 seconds if that’s too hard and scale up.

1.????You can list out things you’re grateful for but you have to feel really, really thankful as you do it otherwise it’s a waste of time.

2.????I now prefer writing full sentences for TEN MINUTES. They begin with the words:

a)????I am really grateful for…

b)???I so appreciate …

c)????I feel very blessed that….

I would add that listening to and reflecting on some of Joe Dispenza’s meditations has helped me speed up the process of rewiring my head.

I have written about this topic a few times before, but I can honestly say this is the first time I feel it’s been making a difference to my brain and my life. I can feel things changing and much more often I feel grateful. It attracts more good things – just like the experts all say. You do have to get granular and appreciate all the little things too. This practice also reduces the social cancer of comparing yourself to others s much. You’re reducing your negativity bias.

Feel it. Feel it. Feel it. Then first your subconscious brain and then your conscious brain will get you to make it all happen.

I am so grateful you read this far! Please: make this a daily habit.

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2021