How are Gratitude, Mindfulness, and Positivity Linked?
Gratitude leads to mindfulness and empowers you to do almost anything.
Distraction is everywhere that you turn. The internet and social media, while great means to learn and grow, are also dangerously distracting and disruptive. I can’t tell you how many times a brief glance at Facebook has turned into 10-30 minutes of mindless scrolling.
Text messages, email, radio, TV, and other instantly accessible information sources can take you on a tangent before you fully grasp how distracted you are. It takes surprisingly little for you to get lost in distractions. You start to wonder why you’re feeling sad, hopeless, lost, distraught, uncertain, afraid, and any number of other negative emotions.
You and I live in a fear-based, consumerist society. Messages of fear, insufficiency, lack, and scarcity are being rolled over you so frequently that they likely don’t even register. Before you know it, you feel bad about not buying that product or service, fear you’re missing out, and feel constantly like something’s lacking if you’re not consuming.
It’s easy to wade through the quagmire of this mindlessly. However, that also makes it sink into your subconscious more readily. That’s because you can ignore it all you want, but it’s still there.
How can you counter it? By employing the most powerful tool for taking control of accessing your conscious awareness that there is: Gratitude.
There’s always something to be grateful for
Even on the worst days you might experience, there’s always something that you can be grateful for. It might seem impossible in the face of sadness, grief, and uncertainty, but that doesn’t lessen the truth.
You can be grateful that you’re alive, you have a place to sleep, people in your life, and anything else material or immaterial you have. Beyond this, you can be grateful for the sun, the moon, the stars, gentle breezes, the smell of coffee, cute animals, and other abstracts of the Universe. If there are things you’re striving to get, you can be grateful for what you already have.
The trouble is that most people don’t express gratitude frequently enough. I don’t mean thinking about it, offering a half-hearted “thanks”, or throwing in a caveat like “I’m grateful but waiting on that thing”. I’m writing about a full-on, thought-and-feeling-tied-together expression of gratitude.
Thank you are among the most powerful words you can say and feel. They might be equal to I am and I love. Whatever follows “thank you” is a powerful acknowledgment of something that makes you feel good and positive. It empowers you not only to recognize and acknowledge the one item you’re saying “thank you” for, but also find and be grateful for more.
Even on the worst day you might be having, there is always something to be grateful for. That glass of water, the deep breath you took, the ability to feel even bad things, that you are here and living. So long as you’re alive there is always something to be grateful for.
With gratitude, you can become more mindful. From mindfulness, you can learn what you can and can’t control of your life, and make choices and decisions from there.
Gratitude is the ultimate fuel for empowerment
When you’re distracted, it’s easy to lose sight of your own conscious awareness. Distraction starts to pull you into mindlessness, taking you away from intent and action. That then allows you to lose yourself in your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind will often take everything put into it at face value. Ergo, when you’re being bombarded with messages of that thing lacking, this thing being scarce, and not enough of those, you start to believe it. Before long, you’re afraid of what’s missing, what you aren’t doing, and other things that – in reality – are outside of your control.
This is where active conscious awareness comes in. When you step outside of your subconscious mind – by becoming aware of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if you’re taking a positive or negative approach to things, and what you are or aren’t doing – your conscious awareness kicks in. That’s mindfulness.
One of the best ways to begin to access mindfulness is gratitude. Finding and expressing gratitude for things tangible or intangible is a matter of intent borne of thought and feeling. Let’s say, for example, you’re grateful for the sun shining down on you. The intention is to acknowledge that gratitude. So, with thought and a feeling behind it, you say or write, “I am grateful for the sunshine.”
I don’t know about you, but reading through the above feels good, open, and strong, That’s because it’s empowering. You’ve opened the path to active conscious awareness. Mindfulness in and of itself is empowering.
That’s because mindfulness is where virtually all the control you can have over life, the Universe, and everything is. Your thoughts, feelings, actions, approach, and intentions, You and only you can choose what they are or aren’t. That’s your empowered superpower.
Practice empowers
The world needs more empowered people. If more people are empowered, those who maintain the fear base of society with artificial lack, scarcity, and insufficiency become visible. The so-called power they wield fades away like a shadow chased out by light.
The best way to change anything is with proactive action. Stand for rather than against things and use positivity to combat negativity. You get what you give to the Universe. So give more good, take that positive approach, and empower yourself to be more present, here and now, and in control.
One simple exercise you can do is to start a gratitude journal. At the beginning or end of the day (or both) take a moment to write down 5-10 things you’re grateful for. Write them out in complete sentences like, “I am grateful for this life I get to experience. Thank you.” Use both grateful and thank you in your sentence.
After you’ve written them out, read them (preferably aloud). As you read, let the feeling of gratitude that goes with the thought and words sink into your consciousness. Read them three times each. Note how you’re feeling after you do this.
Gratitude is always positive. It always empowers, both when given and received. Gratitude, mindfulness, and positivity are linked because all are tools of incredible empowerment that, together, can change your life and put you more in control.
Seeing how gratitude, mindfulness, and positivity are linked it isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that this fear-based society needs you and me to be empowered to steer it towards reason-based, you can use gratitude to open your mindfulness and choose genuine positivity for abundance. Knowing that gratitude is always positive, and empowering when both given and received, you can use gratitude to practice being mindful and positive to take more control of your conscious mind and strengthen virtually every element of your life experience.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and fortieth (540) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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