Gratitude - Day One

I, like many people, have heard about the benefits of practicing gratitude. The common advice is to think of three things daily that you feel grateful for, write them in your Gratitude Journal, and watch your life change. Blah, blah, blah.

Yes, I'm grateful for my family, my home, my job, my friends, my stuff, et cetera. After a few months, (days?) a person starts repeating themselves because really, can we really think of that many things to feel grateful for?

It has recently come to my attention though: Thinking is not quite the same as feeling gratitude. Thinking of something is the first step. But then, to make it really meaningful, one must feel it.

The best way I can describe the process is this:

1.  Feel the energy present in the palms of your hands. Just keep observing until your palms feel a little bit warm and begin to tingle. I don't really know how hard this is for most people; it comes very easily for me because we were taught about this in church when I was little. I do think there is the chance that children are more perceptive to this sort of thing than adults. Also, I have heard that if it is difficult for someone to detect energy either around themselves or others (or objects), it can be useful to try practicing on a cat by holding one's hand a couple of inches above the cat's fur. They have a more noticible energy field around them.

2. Notice the energy in your feet. When you can feel them tingle too, connect the line of energy through your body from hands to feet and back with each deep breath in and out. Doing this raises your energy level and can be done anytime. It is also how to raise your energy level if you are interested in the Law of Attraction principles.

3. Once the energy is flowing through your body, you can feel it center at the heart area. Here is where we feel stuff. Once I thought about what I was going to feel gratitude for, this heightened the feeling to an unbelievable level. With each breath in and out, I could feel the essence of the gratitude in each cell of my body. (Well. I think I did anyway.)

My goal is to Practice Gratitude for 28 days. Today was my first day. When I first woke up this morning, I thought about my hands.

 I am SO happy I have two hands! This makes it very useful to do stuff. I am thankful to have thumbs which make the whole picking things up way easier. Just think of all the things that would be REALLY HARD to do with only one hand... carrying things, cooking, knitting.  Oh yeah! I was just thinking the other night how useful it would be to have three hands so I could eat and keep knitting... Oh! Sorry! Yes, how thankful I am for two hands. As it was, I set my knitting aside and thought about the fact that eating while doing nothing else made me very mindful about each bite, the flavors, etc. (I was eating by myself that evening so not even anyone to talk to... hmm... "talking" could be a future area for gratitude as I like doing that quite a bit...)

So Day One of Practicing Gratitude: Hands.

Where this comes in useful (I'm hoping, and why I'm even bothering with this whole thing): Whenever I find myself getting stressed out, I intend to create the energy to feel gratitude towards my focus for the day. Not surprisingly, I did have a couple of opportunities to try this out, and yes, it did take my focus off the annoyance that would otherwise put me into a funk for who knows how long.

I don't want to feel anxiety anymore...