Gratitude: the key to happiness and abundance

I am grateful for the air I breath. So something tells me to drive to this spot as the Autumn sun is rising to give me this breathtaking view to, um, breathe that air…(you’ll forgive the metaphorical paradox!)

Remember when you were a child and your parents told you that if you didn’t stop crying they’d give you something to cry about? Personally I prefer the above version, borrowed from Rev. Michael Beckwith, one of the world’s foremost spiritual and transformation teachers and founder of the famous Agape International Spiritual Centre. While it sometimes feels difficult to be grateful, I know from my own experience the shift that can happen simply by switching your attention (and so energy) from scarcity or worry to gratitude.

As the Hawaiian principle of Makia says, energy flows where attention goes. So if you focus on what is not working for you, what you don’t want, you will tend to get more of the same. It is very easy to become, and stay, trapped in a negative cycle, when all the evidence around you seems to scream how wrong everything is or how frustrating it is to work towards your goals and dreams – or even just to live.

I have just discovered a very simple “trick” to “reset” your mind. Most people, especially those who read posts about personal growth, despite all their problems, fundamentally want to live – a happy and fulfilled life, at that. So going back to basics and simply – as another great teacher and prolific creator of the “impossible”, Dr Joe Vitale, says – being grateful that you woke up this morning, grateful for air you breathe, anything and everything you can think of, immediately shifts that attention and so energy. Focussing on that, you can then build on that energy and learn to see opportunities to change things instead of just complaining about them. Practising gratefulness brings happiness automatically; focussing on what you want, from a place of happiness and gratefulness, will make it a lot easier to go after it. Once you’re abundant in happiness and gratitude you will find other things showing up to increase your abundance in other areas of your life.

A few years ago I wrote about kairos, a Greek word meaning “the right or opportune moment” and as this morning was certainly a kairos moment – which I am convinced came about precisely because of my attitude of gratitude which, as the above quote reminds us, leads to us having more to be grateful for. Here are a couple more photos I jumped out of the car again to capture after noticing the points of light hanging in the air, the grasses gleaming in the morning light.