Reiki Principles - How to Practice Gratitude

How I Practice Gratitude

Today I took time to write down some random thoughts on gratitude. What I have realised over the years is that to be happy in life we need to focus on what we have and feel grateful towards all those people and forces that have enabled us to gain all that we have. 

And if someone wants to be always miserable, then they should focus on all that they don't have and keep cursing the people who they think are preventing them from getting the things that they crave. But that's not me anymore!

Gratitude is a feeling that is intimately related with happiness, and fortunately is something that can be cultivated consciously. 

Just try this simple gratitude exercise

• Everyday when you get up, write down the five good things in your life for which you feel grateful. 
• Think of all those people and forces that have contributed to enable you to have those things in life. 
• Write their names consciously. Then bless them. 
• You can close your eyes and visualise their faces; if they are places, like your school or temple for example, then visualise those objects; and then consciously send your blessings towards them from your heart.

If you do this exercise for some time, you will start to feel happier and happier day by day. Within a few months time you will start glowing with happiness. 

You will also notice that more often than not, good things are happening to you by serendipity. You are becoming luckier! 

This is so because we live in a loving and caring Universe. God is another popular name for our conscious Universe. 

The Universe loves people who are grateful. 

It is one of the greatest secrets of life. Universe itself revealed this great secret to you today through me. You just need to believe it to be true and do as suggested to realize that it is actually true.

Another related secret to happiness is to focus on what you can do about a situation rather than focussing upon all those things about which you can do nothing. 

For example, you can do nothing to eradicate illiteracy completely from the country or the world. But if you want, you can eradicate illiteracy from the life of one poor child by helping him to study by educating him personally and by then funding his subsequent education. 

Focussing upon the world illiteracy would make you feel powerless and miserable, whereas focussing upon the child that you adopted for education would make you feel wonderful and worthy. So, take responsibility for where you can contribute and stop focussing upon things where you feel powerless.

Feeling grateful for what we have, feeling thankful to those who have contributed to us, cultivating our inner power, and giving back to society for the love and support that we ourselves have received is the way to live happily and constructively. 

Such a lifestyle can truly fulfil us with happiness and meaning.

Smritee