WGP 002: Being in an Attitude of Gratitude - Whole Guidance

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In this podcast I’ll be exploring what it means to be in an Attitude of Gratitude:

I’ll explain what gratitude really is
I’ll also explain why everyone should be practising gratitude in their lives everyday
Finally I’ll talk about a few different ways to practice being in an attitude of gratitude

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What is gratitude? Let me read what Professor Google says. The definition of gratitude: “The quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” Alright so thanks and appreciation, sounds pretty standard.

Now I like to give these two quotes of what I think gratitude really means.

This is from Melody Beattie:

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”

And this from Wayne Dyer:

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change.”

To me gratitude is about seeing things in a new light, in a different perspective and there’s different ways people express gratitude: blessing and prayer; showing appreciation to people; saying thank you and actually meaning it. Gratitude isn’t so much what you say, it’s how you’re being in that moment that you’re giving thanks and appreciation and being grateful and praying and blessing. I love to say “say what you mean and mean what you say.” You can say thank you and not mean it, but you can BE thankful and there’s no denying what you mean.

That’s what gratitude is. Gratitude is a life skill, a tool to reframe parts of our lives from not that much, from scarcity to more than enough and abundance.

Today we love in a world where everything is pretty much 24/7, plugged in all the time, non-stop. We live in the world of FOMO. FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. Now I believe that everyone should be practising and dedicating a few minutes a day to being in an attitude of gratitude because that will get rid of your FOMO disease, your FOMO syndrome, your FOMO illness, okay. Remember gratitude is a reframing tool. It helps us s change our perception of things, so where there wasn’t enough now there’s plenty. What we have is plenty. By practising gratitude no longer do you have this fear of missing out because what you have is already enough and it takes time to see things this way, but that’s why you got to practise this. It’s a tool that you use to build a skill that then becomes a habit.

So being in an attitude of gratitude will help you disconnect from this 24/7 online world that we live in currently. Disconnect just enough to bring you into the present moment, to being more mindful and aware of how your thinking, how your feeling, how’s your body going, how’s your mind going, how’s your life going. Right now we are surrounded by so much stimulation that sometimes we don’t know whether we’re coming or going. Just taking time out to say thank you or to give a blessing or to have a prayer, just being grateful for five seconds will bring you to that moment in the present very mindful and aware of how you’re feeling. What sensations are you feeling in your body? What thoughts are running through your mind before you get into that attitude of gratitude and then what thoughts come after?

Gratitude, it’s not just being polite and saying thank you. It’s disconnecting yourself from the confusion that can appear around you. It’s removing the fear of missing out. It’s bringing you to the present moment, increasing your awareness and making you very mindful of how you’re feeling and how you’re doing in the moment. It’s nothing small, it’s quite huge. Grat-ti-tude. One word. Three syllables. Infinite amount of possibilities of how it can change your life.

Now there is no one way to practise being in an attitude of gratitude, okay. Now I like to leave every episode of the Whole Guidance Podcast in an attitude of gratitude. I explained in episode one how I do this personally. So, before bed I give thanks for one person I interacted with that day, one goal that I accomplished, and also another random experience. That’s how I personally do it. Right before bed and I give thanks for those three things.

Now you may want to set a timer, a gratitude reminder. You might want to book something in your calendar. You can set it for every hour. Maybe you can remind yourself to do this at every meal. You might want to do it first thing in the morning after you wake up. You might want to do it before exercise, after exercise, before meditation, after meditation, before bed. You have to find the time and the duration that works for you. My attitude of gratitude practise takes less than 5 minutes for example.

The way you practise gratitude whether it’s a blessing, whether it’s prayer, whether it’s saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you’ a thousand times in front of a mirror, is up to you. As long as it brings you into the moment and puts a smile on your face you’ll know you’re doing what’s right for you. There’s no one way to do this.

Try this easy 10 second practise. In any moment you have the need to be grateful and this could be anytime it comes to mind (it doesn’t matter whether you’re waiting to cross the road, stuck in traffic, bored at work, stressed at home, waking up, brushing your teeth, taking out the trash) close your eyes if possible and think of someone you’d like to say thank you to and mean it and be sure to have an image of them clearly in your head. This could be a supernatural being or even yourself. Take a deep breath counting four seconds as you breath in and on the out breath say out loud or in your mind ‘thank you’. Also, let out that breath as a huge sigh of relief. Sorted. You just practised being in an attitude of gratitude.

So it doesn’t matter when you do it. It doesn’t matter how you do it. As long as you do it. As long as you can take time out to bring love in. Love? What’s that got to do with gratitude? Well, there’s this book called A Course In Miracles (it’s a pretty beast of a book). It’s about life. This is what ACIM says about gratitude:

“Gratitude goes hand in hand with love, and where one is, the other must be found.”

This has proven to be true time and again in my experience. So I could have called this podcast attitude of love, but it just didn’t sound as good off the tongue. When you’re being in an attitude of gratitude you’re bringing yourself back into love. What I’m saying is that if you can take time out to bring some love in you’ll find yourself feeling less stressful and a lot happier.

Now I would like to hear from you, the beautiful listener. How do you practise being in an attitude of gratitude? Is it weekly, daily, multiple times a day? Do you use prayer or give blessings or do you just say thank you to yourself, to others, to God, to the Universe? How do you do it? Leave your comments [in the comments section below] or leave your comments in an iTunes review. Either way I would love to hear from you.

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