CATALYST NEWS

Eva Dahm, CPCC, MA

November, 2004

Dedicated to your growth and exploration

SIMPLE PRACTICE YEILDS HUGE REWARDS-Grounding, Positive Outlook and Abundance

One of the daily exercises I frequently assign my client is to write five things they are grateful for at the end of the day. This is a habit talked about on Oprah and in many books.

The seemingly simple act of reflecting back on the day with gratitude produces wonderful results. My clients report feeling more grounded and present while they cull five people, happenings or images to appreciate. When you observe with this objective, you will be pleasantly surprised at what pops up.

"Gratitude is the first essential step to claim the innocence needed to see the world is for you, "says Rhonda Britten in Change Your Life in 30 Days. "Gratitudes are positive statements framed in the present tense about a person, place, situation, or event. When you are grateful, you are glad of heart, willing, humbled, looking for the gift inside the challenge; you find opportunities where none existed before, and feel connected to the rest of the world."

I usually have at least one nature scene-a beautiful sunrise in Colorado is today's example. I frequently find I am thankful for the people in my life. I am able to appreciate both the close friends and family as well as the acquaintances or people briefly encountered.

I routinely list my coaching clients as part of my personal gratitude lists because they teach me so much. And I remind myself to be grateful for the country I live in and the plenty we usually take for granted. This is time to visualize a planet where everyone has the adequate food and shelter.

BENEFITS

Another benefit of this practice is creating a positive outlook on your day. Looking for things to be grateful for shifts through any negatives in quick order so the good moments can be highlighted.

As a side benefit, your sleep may come quicker and be calmer because you will have reviewed the day's happenings consciously. Going over the day is a technique suggested when someone who has trouble falling asleep.

"While forgiveness heals the heart of old hurts, gratitude opens it to present love. Gratitude also evokes happiness, which is itself, a powerfully healing and beneficial emotion. Gratitude is a gift to everyone." Roger Walsh

CREATE ABUNDANCE

The final benefit of doing a daily gratitude list is abundance. Quantum mechanics teaches us when we focus on something, it increases. So keeping the positive items in your laser focus daily will increase them. (After all, one meaning of appreciate is to increase in value or grow.)

It's common knowledge that thinking over and over, we don't have enough money or we need more money or we lack the funds to pay this bill creates MORE LACK and MORE NEED. So today change your thoughts to gratefulness for what you do have and more of that will come.

Appreciate the financial resources you have. Be grateful for your loving family and friends. Affirm your love of Mother Earth. Focus on a kind word or compliment you received. Be glad you spoke up in a situation where previously you had not. Be happy you took action on a long-held TO-DO item.

One client told me that for years her family listed gratitudes on Thanksgiving Day-one for each year of their life. What a great way to begin this DAILY PRACTICE of writing gratitudes.

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUSELF

Rhonda Britten also asks her clients to writing five acknowledgments of themselves. Writing about you and what you have done or who you have been during the day forces you to join the shower of praise.

Building self-confidence is a process of keeping your promises to yourself and others and seeing your accomplishments and taking credit for them. Writing five acknowledgments can help you to track both of these.

It seems fairly easy to write five things you are grateful for. Some clients have some bumps in the road when asked to write about themselves. Isn't it interesting to notice? All of us have a sense of being "less than who we should," don't we? Looking for ways to express our strengths will build them and well as our self-esteem.

"Jelaluddin Rumi, Sufi seer and poet, is right. We are guests on the great, good Earth, and our every breath should be one of gratitude to the Host. The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart suggests that if the only prayer we say in our lifetime is "thank you," that would suffice." Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy

Essential Spirituality, Roger Walsh, 1999.

Change Your Life in 30 Days, Rhonda Britten, 2004.

Spiritual Literacy, Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, 1996.

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