Attitude of Gratitude - The Gratitude Exercise

by Catherine Pratt
www.Life-With-Confidence.com

If you read The Inner-Power Emails, one of the exercises Charles Burke recommends is the Gratitude Exercise. It's easy to do. For 10 days you write down 10 things that you are grateful and happy for in your life.

Each item needs to be described in about 50 – 100 words. That's it. It sounds easy enough until you try it.

As Charles Burke says,

"Success is a skill. Happiness is a skill. Gratitude is a skill. Like all skills, they must be practiced clumsily before they can be done naturally. So, if you'll devote ten honest days to the practice of feeling true gratitude and happiness, I can promise you a dazzling new skill. A skill that just naturally attracts success like a magnet draws iron. Because nothing attracts good fortune and success like a joyous, grateful heart."

For many who take the challenge, this truly is an eye opening experience. You may suddenly realize how many negative thoughts you have during the day or you may discover how many wonderful things are happening to you but you never really gave them a second thought before.

This exercise will cause your mind to shift from the negative to the positive. Each day, you will begin to notice the good things because your mind knows that it will need to come up with 10 things to write down later.

It’s a very effective way of training your brain to notice the good in your day rather than focusing on the negative. You will have learnt a skill that will enable you to become far more successful and happy in your life.

If you find when you're doing the exercise that you're struggling to think of anything to write down, try using the Gratitude Prayer. The following is re-printed with permission from the Universe of Power forum (note: Universe of Power is no longer in operation) :

The Gratitude Prayer is a very quick and powerful way to help you feel better in a matter of moments. It may seem silly at first, but trust me — it works!

Whenever you’re feeling a bit down, just think about all the things you’re even slightly happy about in your life, even if it’s just that your dog didn’t happen to bite you on the way out the door today. I’m being serious here!

Sometimes it’s really difficult to feel happy about anything—believe me, I know. I used to feel that way far more often than I’d like to admit. Anyway, the Gratitude Prayer is simply saying to yourself that you are so happy about every little thing, like this:

• “I am so happy that my dog didn’t bite me today!”
• “I am so happy that my car started this morning!”
• “I am so happy that I have one good friend!”
• “I am so happy my roof isn’t leaking!”
• “I am so happy I have a job that pays the bills!”

And so on…keep repeating this statement for every little thing you can think of. After just a few minutes, you will actually feel your energy rising and you will feel better. You may even find yourself smiling! This is a five-minute fix to the doldrums. It works every time. No matter how silly it may seem, just try it and see for yourself (alone, if you must).

By doing this exercise, you actually are raising your energy vibrations on a physiological level! Gratitude is one of the two most powerful emotions in the entire Universe. Love is the other one (surprise, surprise!).

Gratitude is one of the keys to having a successful and fulfilling life. Try the exercise and see what changes it can manifest for you. It doesn’t take very long yet the effects will be life altering. Even after a very short space of time, you’ll find that you quickly forget that you burnt your finger or missed the bus but instead remember the good things that happened in your day. You have now trained yourself to see the positive instead of the negative. You may find that opportunities you never knew existed will begin to appear and you will be ready to take advantage of them.

Life is really all in how we view it and how we think about it. Wouldn’t you just rather have the happy and positive life? It’s in your power. Try the Gratitude Exercise and see what a difference it can make.

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. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. - Melody Beattie

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