while come to the power of gratitude workshop my name is susie's fyvie and i'm a life coach and i also host and produce a local television show in belmont massachusetts called daring to dream so my mission in life is to inspire other people to follow their dreams and live the life of their dreams and i feel like an important piece of that is gratitude and i really feel and i know in my life expressing gratitude on a regular basis can make major changes in your life so i'm just curious how many of you keep a gratitude journal all or are you like have a gratitude practice i would say oh wow that's wonderful that's wonderful so gratitude mean anybody have a appreciation yes yeah right so it's an appreciation so when someone gives you a gift you say thank you right but isn't it really much more than that i mean when you think about it the expression of gratitude has been the central theme in every major religion since the beginning of time and when he think about that that's pretty powerful right so what it what is it that you think is behind that what's behind that power or what happens is when we express gratitude for what we already have in our lives we're actually sin the had a message to the universe that we're ready and open to receive more into our lives so if you are expressing that you're grateful and acknowledging what you already have in your life you really are blocking yourself from allowing more to come in i don't know how many of you have seen the secret or are familiar with have heard about the secret in the law of attraction well gratitude is a p is a key piece of of that law of attraction that's a key step that you have to take is to express gratitude on a regular basis to be able to move forward and draw more into your life there's been a lot of research in just in the past five years about the effects of gratitude scientists have actually gotten involved and wanted to find out is this really work you know the expression gratitude and they found that people who express gratitude on a regular basis have better health they have a better outlook on life their happy years in general they have less less conflict in their lives so when you see the research that proves the effects of gratitude and you think about the history behind expressing gratitude and makes you realize there's got to be something to this right so what i'd like to do is ask you all to take a moment and write down at least five things that you're grateful for right now in your life five things that you're grateful for and you can on the handout that i gave you there's a section on the front page that you can use so as everyone else sat with their their gratitudes would anyone like to share anything that they wrote anything that they're grateful for you know one of  the explanations that i've heard that resonated most with me and i thought was just so powerful is that gratitude returns us to lot of so through the expression of gratitude we actually return to the core of love which in my mind in a lot of people's mind is god god is love right so i mentioned  earlier some research that that has been done in the last five years there's two scientists dr robert naiman zz and michael mccullough who did a really extensive research project with people in gratitude and they had people keep a gratitude journal for thirty days and then they had people just express gratitude on a daily basis and then they had you know obviously subjects who didn't express gratitude all and i mean the results were really profound i mean they were marked results in improvement in health higher levels of vitality and optimism lower levels of stress and depression and less envious of others you know which in the is of others really accepting what you have and not comparing yourself and wanting what someone else has and even it inhibited destructive behaviors particularly in personal relationships so just that it of expressing gratitude on a regular basis can really have profound effects in your life another form of research that has been done that i just has it has astonished me and i just think it's amazing dr massaro so in moto from japan has done work with water crystals and he actually started examining water crystals before and after they were exposed to words like gratitude  prayer things like that and he would literally i mean he's done a lot of different types of studies he's he studied water in the ganges and had people hundreds of people praying on the river and they would test the water but literally he would put jars of water and write the word of gratitude on the water on the bottle and then he would have bottles that had things like hate or hitler or things like that and they studied the molecules after being the bottles being exposed to those words and it was just amazing the molecules actually changed the crystals in the molecules actually changed after they were exposed to different words and i passed this book around and it shows a water crystal that's been exposed to the words love and gratitude and it's just so beautiful you know and it's just in then when you look at the images of crystals that were exposed to negative i share with you my story of finding the power of gratitude i discovered the power of gratitude ten years ago i was going through a very difficult time  which started out i thought was it was going to be a great wonderful change in my life and i had been in corporate america for fifteen years at that point and knew that i was meant to do something else and i finally made that leap and said i'm going to quit my job and here you know and figure out what i'm supposed to do with my life and i was with a partner at the time who was very supportive and very encouraging of me doing this and it was great wonderful all i quit my job and you know everyone sent me off and i wouldn't traveled for a month and it was wonderful and i came home and immediately just crashed i fell into this total identity crisis because i had never not been in a job and had a title to identify myself with and so suddenly it was like who am i who am i if i'm not an editor or marketing manager or whatever and unfortunately that kind of loss of identity sent me into a spiral and i just became filled with fear and doubt in what am i doing and and that led to a depression and as i'm going through all this my partner's like what's wrong with you know this is exciting you should be like you know you have the opportunity to take the time to discover what you want to do you know and he couldn't relate at all and it ended up destroying our relationship and at the time the only thing that really helped me kind of get out of my funk was exercise and that was the thing that kind of gave me a boost and then i tore my a c l and i had to have surgery so i was laid up for four to six weeks on crutches and so i was at home i had no relationship i had no job and i thought what am i going to do now and i started turning to all the books on my shelves i spent many many years in publishing and i love books and i have many many books and i have a lot of spiritual books and self help kind of books and i started turning to those and i through that i found a book by sarah broth knock simple abundance i don't know if any of you have seen that but in her book she recommends writing down at least five things that you're grateful for each day so why what have i got to lose so i started doing it and i n the beginning i felt i don't feel like i have anything to be grateful for but when you really break it down we all have so much to be grateful for i mean literally i have a warm bed to sleep in i have clean water to drink i have food to eat dinner so when you when you're feeling like things aren't going my way i'm not you know my life's not going in the direction i want what do i have to be grateful for you have to take a step back and break it down and find the things that you can be grateful for and literally it was amazing within five days of may keep in your gratitude journal for for five days things started shifting for me and when i say that what i mean is you know i'm sitting at home alone you know i'd put so much effort into my relationship that i had lost some of my friendships and so a new friend that i recently called and said oh we're going out to a party we can come and pick you up in because i was on crutches will come and pick you up and take you out and i did that and it you know that lifted my spirits and then this is this is kind of a superficial thing but i'll share it just because i think think it's kind of a cool example i was walking through a parking lot and i see this really cute mercedes sportster you know those little cute cars and it was all shiny and blue and i thought wow i'd like to meet the guy that drives that car you know walk in to the restaurant i was going to and when i'm coming out i'm on crutches and someone holds the door for me and you know says oh what you know what happened in he's walking with me to my friend's car and walks right up to that little blue mercedes and gets in and i thought well next time i guess i have to be more specific to actually if you want to get his number just read it but more importantly  chance a friend came to stay with me for a couple of days and a friend called for her at my house looking for someone to do public relations which is something i've never done but i'd always been interested in and i started talking to this woman and said wow i've always wanted to do public relations that literally led to me having a job doing public relations so it really does shift things in your life and things start coming to you when you're putting out there your gratitude and feeling you know that you're you're grateful for what you already have in your life so what  begin to breathe deeply full breath in and out and imagine that you're breathing into your heart and with each inhale imagine that you're stoking the fire in your heart and as you exhale air is released into the fire to fuel the  flames now within the light of that fire i want you to focus on a specific person an event or an experience that you're truly grateful for in your so allow that experience or person to come alive in the fire in your heart and as you focus on this allow the feelings that you have about this person or experience to wash over you do you feel love do you feel connected do you feel joy really take in all the sensations of experiencing that feeling of grateful now as you come back to consciousness and open your eyes take just a moment to write down the feelings that you experienced so if you're ever at a point where you're struggling to feel grateful or struggling with your life you know feeling stuck go back to that sensation that you just experienced or go through that visualization again focusing on something that you're truly grateful for and allow those sensations to wash over you because when you when you allow that feeling sense of gratitude to wash over your body you're actually increasing your vibrational energy and as you increase your vibrational energy you're sending stronger messages out to the universe that you're ready for more and that you're ready for your dreams to come true so gratitude is a key step in the process of dream manifestation and as you're developing the dream that you have for your life it's kind of like the second step you put it out there you ask for what you want and then you start expressing gratitude for what you already have and the universe will respond and bring the next step to you we just have to be open and listen so if gratitude has so much power we have research that verifies that and it's been used for centuries why don't we use it more why don't more people express gratitude do you think any ideas i think in our society we've grown up with the american dream of having more and being all that we can be and making millions of dollars and that it's led to a society where we're constantly feeling the lack and we're constantly comparing ourselves to others and because of that we tend to not look at what we already have and our lives and appreciate what we already have because we're focused on what we don't have and what that one ha that one has and why don't we have that right so we've got to take a step back and get into our place of gratitude so since some things i wanted to share with you  how you can bring gratitude into your life the first as i mentioned is keep the gratitude journal and i actually developed a thirty day gratitude journal  and there's a sample of it in your hand out the first two pages and i came up with a framework for it that's based on an indian proverb that reads everyone is a house with four rooms a physical a mental and emotional and a spiritual most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day even if only to air it out we are not a complete person so the framework for this journal is to list in each of those four categories things that you're grateful for so think about areas physical areas mental spiritual and emotional so that you kind of bring the idea of your practice of gratitude and this is just this is just one approach and you know you can well i have i have some of these for sale  but you can use that the handout that i've given you you know as as a model or literally just get a journal and every night or every morning before you go out of that before you know better before when you first get up take five minutes to write down five things that you're grateful for you now so the second thing is express gratitude for the most basic elements of life so for instance as you're brushing your teeth you know express gratitude that you have water you have a tooth brush  are actually able to to brush your teeth when you take a shower you know acknowledge that you have soap and water to clean yourself with you know so just as you're going through your day become more mentally sage said the most important prayer in the world is just two words thank you and you know we get so busy in our lives that we often don't take the time to say thank you so take the time when you're at the grocery store and especially with the grumpy checkout person you know look them in the eye and say thank you you know with the snobby salesperson that you encounter say thank you you know it doesn't cost you anything and the thing is when you express that to another person it impacts them as well so it actually increases their vibration when you give that out to them so it's actually very powerful and the other thing is to express any knowledge the beauty of nature so again you know we go about our days are so busy and often you don't even notice the cloud or the trees or thank god the flowers coming up so take the time as you're out to notice the sky in the trees and you know beautiful nature there's so much beauty in nature and the other thing is when you start kind of negative self talk which i know with me you know it's like this tape running in my head you know and once it starts and so it seems hard to stop it but you actually can you're in control of your thoughts so create as a switch in your mind and when you start thinking negative thoughts literally flip that switch or say stop be gentle with yourself but just stop and shift your thoughts so anytime you have a negative thought as quickly as you can shift it to a positive thought and a thought of gratitude  cole way the founder of the momentum project had a suggestion that he calls the three for one gratitude stop so he suggests whenever you receive good news via email or a phone call or in person to immediately stop and think of three other things you're grateful for you know so it's just like triple the good news and the feeling of gratitude that you have coming in there's another website that i don't know if any of you have heard about it called grow gratitude and it's a really it's a really cool site and they've done i think it's thirty days  of going through a process of of gratitude and you might want to check that out gratitude so does anyone have any suggestions or ideas to share about gratitude that has worked for you there's a great story in the secret about the guy who kept apoc iraq and his pocket and he would you know feel it every now and then but every day take it out at the end of the day and take the time as you're saying to express gratitude and man from i'm not sure which country in africa but was was here visiting him and saw his he dropped his rock and ask him what it was like oh it's my gratitude rock and he explained it to him this man goes home he gets an e mail from the african man that his son is very sick and says can you please send me a gratitude rock and you know this was just a stone he picked up on you know on the side of the pond or whatever and he's like of course also in your gratitude stone you know which he does and and the man ins up writing him back saying that his son was completely healed and that they've actually created a business selling gratitude rocks that was that so you think about you know just one little incident like that help powerful it can be you know when you when you take the time to share it and the thing you have to remember in those situations is that the other person's reaction has nothing to do with you it's not a reflection on you in any way it's all about their stuff the only way you can help that person or that person can change is by seeing the example of how they should be so by you expressing gratitude saying thank you you're showing another person how to be in the world so it is hard you know when you know you kind of get beaten down then you think i'm  bother you now but when you think about and if you believe in the concept that we're all connected you know that we're all in this together you know it's like sometimes you have to lift others up and sometimes it takes you know a little longer than you might think and it's like you know but because you're aware of it and because you know the power it has then it becomes your responsibility to share that when you have something negative coming towards you and you take it and instead of taking it and spiraling down with it you know just going with that negativity if you can flip flop it and like you did write a gratitude about it and say thank you because there's a reason you know why everything happens and why everything comes into our lives you turn it into a into a positive you know and the other thing it can do is it can flip your mood instantly i mean literally if you're having a bad day and you know it's like spirals you know if one bad things thing happens and you you know kind of go with that negative thinking in your frustration typically more things happen right so it spirals out of control or maybe not out of control but it continues in that pattern so if you once the first negative thing happens or the negative first negative thought comes up if you can switch that you're releasing it you're releasing that negativity so you're not going to carry it around with you anymore you know so you can really shift your mood by making that switch and the thing is once you become aware and you start expressing gratitude and you want to have a positive outlook it becomes really difficult to be around negative people you know you can't they have to make that choice themselves all you can do is be an example you know of how you can live differently sometimes you have to move on from relationships with years really hard but you know that's life things change and relationships change yeah the thing is i actually did a workshop earlier on daring to dream and one of the things i suggest in pursuing your dreams is using affirmations and that's a great that's a great thing to do with your gratitude journal is actually say thank you for things that you're dreaming of happening and say them in the present tense as if they've already happened so if you want to find a relationship rather than saying i mean how many i mean i have for years why i really want a relationship where you know what the universe hears all she wants that some day but she's not serious about it yet so we'll move on and wait till she's ready right so we have to say is i am in the most wonderful loving relationship and some people struggle with that because they think well how can i say that it's not true but the thing is you create what comes into your life and so when you state it when you put it out there it's going to come to you so it's all it all ties into believing that it's possible and believing that it can happen so state the things that you want to bring into your life as if they've already happened in the present  well this is been great thank you so much for coming in and participating today and i hope you'll go home with the really new desire to express your gratitude and take it out into the world and and allow it to really change your lives and lead you to your dreams so thank you all so live and enjoy the rest of the day i'm offering a free f version of the gratitude journal on my website so if you want to sign up for that if anyone does be happy to offer that