A Daily Gratitude Practice:
By: Kim Littrell
Tags: Gratitude, Health, Manifestation, Wealth, Law Of Attraction

Attracting More Wealth, Health, and Love in 2020

We’ve all heard it time and time again. If you want to change your life, practice gratitude. But how will it change your life? And how do you actually practice gratitude? I set out to answer these questions and this is what I discovered along that journey.

Where Focus Goes, Energy Flows

There are billions of different possibilities that are in a state of potential in the world around you. It takes your focus to actually bring one of these possibilities into your reality. The more you focus on something, the more real it becomes. Likewise, the less you focus on something, the less real it becomes.

Here’s a 30 second experiment for you: Put your hand up, extended out in front of your face. Look at your hand. You can see it clearly. It is a very real object, in a very real place in time and space.

Now look past your hand at the wall behind it. As your hand is now in your peripheral vision and you are no longer focusing on it, it appears to be moving, doesn’t it? It’s as if it’s in more than one place at at time. That’s because it is. This is quantum physics 101.

Einstein proved that nothing is solid until you observe it. Objects remain in a state of potential until you shift your attention to them as the observer. You are literally creating your external world based upon what you are focusing on. It is important to consider both your problems and your blessings in this light.

When you focus on your problems, they don’t budge. They become more and more a stagnant part of your reality the longer you focus on them. However, when you remove your focus from your problems, they have the ability to shape shift, sometimes disappearing altogether.

The same goes for your blessings. When you bring your attention to them, they become more and more a part of your current reality. You can see, then, why it is important to make your blessings your focal point, as you certainly don’t want them disappearing.

Tune In to Energetic Frequencies to Attract More

Going further down the quantum physics rabbit hole is the understanding that everything in the Universe is made up of energy which vibrates at different frequencies. Each time you tune in to a frequency, you find similar energies.

Emotions vibrate at their own individual frequencies. When you are in a state of joy or gratitude or love, you tune in to that heightened energy and attract more reasons to stay within those frequencies. On the other end of the spectrum are lower emotions such as anger or guilt or shame. When you are in the frequency of anger, guilt, or shame, you attract more reasons to stay within those frequencies as well.

The same goes for the energetic frequency of objects. Like attracts like. If you buy a yellow car, all of a sudden you start seeing yellow cars everywhere. This is the Law of Attraction at work. Were those yellow cars there before you tuned into the frequency of yellow cars? Well, potentially. But at least not in your reality.

Use Your Reticular Activating System in Your Favor

Each person has a Reticular Activating System (or RAS for short) in their brain. As there are billions of different potentials around you and therefore billions of different possible bits of information available to you every second, your RAS filters through it all to make for a more manageable life experience.

So how does your RAS determine what gets in? It filters based on your preferences and expectations. Your brain loves to be right and you take in information according to what you’ve told your brain is important to you and what you already expect to find in your reality.

As an example, let’s say you have been focusing on finding the perfect mate to travel and have fun with and are already in a state of gratitude for this person, believing they’re out there just waiting for you to find them.

At dinner, you pass a table and notice an attractive woman. Later, you overhear a conversation from that table, even though it’s two tables away, in which she is explaining that she is looking for someone to travel with and have fun with. It turns out to be your perfect mate! This was your RAS picking up on a possibility that agreed with your current thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

In contrast, let’s say you were thinking about how there are no eligible women in your town. You decide you are fed up with dating and feel like you will never find the one. In that same restaurant, with that same perfect mate two tables away, you don’t even see her, much less hear her. Your RAS is simply filtering her out, proving you right.

Pull It All Together to Attract More Wealth, Health, and Love

If you look at the typical thought process revolving around the desire to acquire more wealth, it likely sounds something like this: “I want to be a millionaire,” or “I wish I had a million dollars.” By thinking “I want” or “I wish” you’ve already made your first mistake.

Your focus is on the lack of the thing you desire. And by focusing on lack, you feel desperate, needy, and unhappy with your current reality. What does that attract more of? More desperation, more neediness, more unhappiness, and therefore, more lack.

Even if you didn’t use the words “I want” or “I wish” and simply walked around all day chanting, “I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire, I am a millionaire,” Would it feel that much different from the prior example? Would you really believe you are a millionaire just by saying it over and over again?

Contrary to popular belief, attracting your desires in to your reality takes more than just thoughts alone. The focus on the thought must evoke an emotional frequency that aligns with what you want, and it must have a belief attached to it that changes your expectations so that your RAS knows what opportunities to filter to you.

This is easy in terms of the opposite of your desires — your problems, your mistakes, your fears — thinking about them generates all kinds of deep feelings and emotions and beliefs, all of which make them very real and tend to make them multiply. But how do you do that for your desires?

If you really want to become a millionaire, stop focusing on not being a millionaire. Instead, pivot your thoughts to the areas in your life where you already feel rich and express the elevated emotion of gratitude.

Your thoughts should sound more like this: “I appreciate this iPhone so much. It makes my life a million times easier and I am glad I have enough money to afford it along with other luxuries in my life. I am so grateful for my job and my paycheck, that I not only have money to pay my bills, but that I also have enough left over to go out with my friends and have my groceries delivered. I am so grateful I can afford this apartment, that I have a place to call my own, and a gorgeous pool right outside my door.”

By shifting your focus around money from one of lack to gratitude, you realize you already are rich. You feel rich. You believe you are rich. You are tuned into the frequency of being rich and your RAS is picking out potentials in your outer environment to bring you more riches.

Of course gratitude is not all about money. What else do you want more of? Maybe it’s not wealth, maybe it’s health or love. Just like you did with money, take a look at where in your life you already have abundance in these areas.

Health can be a bit tricky. After all, how do you focus on anything else when you’re in pain? Sometimes you have to get creative. Be thankful for your yoga practice that is restoring your health every day. Be thankful for your wonderful doctors who know just the right things to do to get you healthy. Appreciate legs that can run and eyes that can see. Be grateful for the health of the people in your life that you love.

Speaking of love, can you feel grateful for your dog that loves you unconditionally, more than anything, who is so excited to see you every time you walk in the door? Are you thankful for your overwhelmingly supportive parents who are always there for you and would do anything in the world for you? What about your best friend who sees all of your faults, but loves you anyway despite them, perhaps even loves you because of them?

By feeling grateful for the areas in your life where you already feel loved, the feeling of love and the belief you are loved will multiply as your frequency and expectations align with love.

Develop Your Very Own Gratitude Practice

So now that you have all this information about why feeling grateful is so important, it begs the question, what do you do with it all? How do you “practice” gratitude? Is it something you do daily, weekly, monthly? For a couple minutes or hours? Do you write about it, do you think it, or speak it?

The answer is yes. Yes, to all of the above. There is no cookie cutter approach to showing gratitude. A gratitude practice can look different for each person.

It could mean going on a 5–10 minute gratitude rampage each morning in your journal in which you free-write everything that comes into your mind that you love about your life. Maybe it’s answering writing prompts in a gratitude journal you bought that’s pre-filled with questions.

You may not be someone who enjoys journaling. Perhaps your practice could be appreciating the beautiful day each time you go on a walk and listing in your mind all the things you are grateful for in that moment — the sun shining, the blue skies, the birds chirping, and then moving on to other things, like the people and things in your life that you are grateful for.

Maybe it’s implementing a practice of going around the dinner table with your family, each of you listing three things you are grateful for that day. It could be as easy as adding a “thank you” section to your prayers each night.

Watch as Your Life Begins to Change

The more I learned about practicing gratitude, the more I realized it isn’t about a specific process, but rather finding a way to routinely jump-start your brain in to thinking in a different way. By implementing a gratitude practice into your life, you slowly change your brain’s neural pathways to focus on the good, rather than the bad.

Your practice will eventually overflow into other areas of your life and you will become more apt to incorporate appreciation into every moment. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to recognize when you are doing the opposite of appreciating something and then making the choice in that moment to shift your perspective.

An example of this can be waking up in the morning and when your first thought is usually “Ugh, I don’t want to get out of bed,” observing how this thought makes you feel and deciding to pivot in that moment to a better, more appreciative thought such as, “Thank you Universe, God, Inner Being, The Devine, for the gift of another beautiful day on this Earth.”

It is catching yourself chiding your husband for forgetting to hang up his wet towel again and in the next moment choosing to tell him how much you appreciate him anyway. Maybe it’s even telling him something you admire about him instead.

It is hearing your friend complain about how much weight she’s gained and rather than commiserating with her on the five pounds you gained over the holidays as well, saying instead, “You know, I had such a good time over holiday break with my family and enjoying all the delicious food, I refuse to feel bad about this extra five pounds. It’ll go away, but those memories will last forever. I’m so grateful for them.”

Your words are powerful. When you speak about the things you are grateful for rather than your problems, watch as the energy in the room shifts. With practice, you may not only change your life, but you just may change the lives of everyone around you too.

Set aside some time daily to practice gratitude. Make it a priority. Your practice should be something you look forward to and can be as unique as you are. The how is not important, what is important is that you take the time to do it, that you feel the gratitude wash over you, that you believe you are blessed. Feel so much gratitude that a smile forms on your face and tears are brought to your eyes. Then carry those feelings with you throughout the day and watch as a new life unfolds before you.

Kim Littrell is a freelance writer specializing in Health & Wellness. Contact her at KimRLittrell@gmail.com to see how she can help your business find new leads through engaging content.