Every week we practice our gratitude attitude at the beginning of the meditation session. So today, I thought we would actually discuss the benefits of gratitude. Believe it or not, the guy who started the gratitude rock movement was my coach and is a personal friend. Lee Brower based in Utah and all around an amazing guy. Lee Brower tells about gratitude rock in the movie ‘The Secret’. He took a little rock and decided that every time he touched it he would think of something he was grateful for. So when he puts the gratitude stone in his pocket in the morning he goes through what he is thankful for, and when he empties his pocket in the night and finds the rock he goes again through what he’s thankful for.
Lee started every meeting we had with a gratitude attitude and he kind of rubbed off on me so about 15 years ago, I started conducting every meeting with a gratitude attitude.
Let’s look at why creating a gratitude mindset is important. Gratitude creates a mindset of abundance. If you look at life from a scarcity point of view, life will eventually become measurable. An abundance mindset allows you to not chase things for the sake of chasing them. Oprah Winfrey once said: “If you look at what you have in life, you will always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you will never have enough.”
Do you notice some people have this victim mindset? If something bad happens, they always ask why me? They blame everyone and their siblings for their problems including their co-workers, the government, family members, and so forth. People with a victim mindset are never happy no matter how much material wealth they accumulate.
On the flip side, people with a gratitude mindset focus on abundant opportunities available to them. It’s like a classic saying “why didn’t I think of that?” When we are grateful, we tend to focus on the positivity around us. That in turn brings abundance. People who are successful know there are enough resources in the world and stay away from competing for the same resources. A gratitude mindset allows us to leverage the resources we have as opposed to competing for them. It also creates awareness for the resources around us – develop an eye out if you will.
We have talked about this in the previous sessions I believe. But if we think about where we are in life, we are extremely lucky. If you have food, shelter, and clothing (roti, kapada or makan) and you are in good health, you are luckier than most people on this planet. Once you realize how lucky you are and begin to appreciate that, you will start noticing the opportunities around you. Because as they say; when a perspective changes, everything changes.
So how do we develop a gratitude mindset? The first thing to do is to develop a daily practice. Every morning when you wake up or before you go to bed or at a dinner table, spend five minutes thinking about what you are grateful for and why. Why is as important as what here. Why allows us to dig deep and create a meaningful experience.
Another way to develop gratitude is to major our success. No matter how small, be thankful for it. Some people live in what I call a “gap” – the distance between where they are and where they want to be. I used to be one of those people. Once I started developing gratitude practice, I began to appreciate the abundance that I already had. So it is very important to not live in the gap.
And the most important way to develop a gratitude mindset is with intention. Be sure to make it a habit to appreciate everyone who you come across from your family members, coworkers, essential workers you come across in your daily routine, and so forth.
They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. So for the next 21 days, give your best to develop a gratitude mindset. You will see changes in your life for the better.