Gratitude: A Recipe For Abundance
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it’s the perfect time to explore how you can use gratitude and the power of your mind to transform your financial reality and bring more abundance into your life.
Let’s start by talking about the status quo.
The Power of Focus
It’s more common for people to know what they don’t want, rather than what they do:
I don’t want to have any debt
I don’t want to overspend
I don’t want to be anxious around money.
But when you focus on what you lack, you attract more of the same. Here’s an example you may have heard before that illustrates what I mean:
Don’t think about a pink elephant. Don’t notice how big it is. Don’t notice what shade of pink it is? Don’t think about its shape or the sounds it may make.
It’s kind of impossible to NOT think about it now that you’re thinking about it. This is because the subconscious mind does not usually respond to negative modifiers like “Not” or “Don’t.” But that’s just an image in your head, right?
The Mind’s Filter
Well, when you think about something enough, you begin to notice it more in your life. A common example of this is when you get a new car and you start to see that car everywhere. This isn’t because of a sudden flash sale on Jeep Wranglers. It’s because of the part of your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
Outside of being a mouthful to say, it regulates your attention and drives motivation. To put it simply, it filters out the things that it deems not relevant to you. The Jeeps were always there! You just see them now because you’ve been thinking about them. The moral of the story is that what you think about, you bring about.
But how does this relate to money?
The Connection To Money
If you’re constantly thinking about how you don’t make enough money or how there are no good job openings anywhere, then it’s possible that you may filter OUT an opportunity that’s right in front of you. On the flip side, when you think about what you DO want, you instruct your brain to filter IN these opportunities. You may be thinking to yourself “So I just have to think positively? I’ve tried that already.” Stick with me here, I’m about to share the secret ingredient to this recipe.
The Secret Ingredient
Here’s the problem most people run into: They think with their mind, without feeling with their body. Let’s use the Jeep Wrangler example again. Just because you think about a Jeep doesn’t mean your mind will suddenly deem it important enough to filter it into your life. The thought you have must be paired with a strong emotion to be considered important. However, the emotion can be positive or negative. When you think about your debt and FEEL strongly charged emotions like fear, anxiety or stress, you are actually telling your brain that this is something it should focus on creating more of.
However, there is hope! This entire process can be reverse engineered to create a recipe for getting what you want. But before I share the recipe, there is one last ingredient.
Gratitude
Why is this SO important? Because gratitude is the emotional signature of having received something. Think about it, you typically feel grateful when you receive a gift or when you’ve achieved a goal. So if you can rehearse gratitude over and over again, it will become familiar. By the time it becomes a habitual emotion, your life will look and feel more abundant than you can imagine.
The status quo is to wait for something outside of yourself to feel grateful for. However, you can bypass this and generate gratitude from within you, by pretending you already have what you desire. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what is happening in your mind vs. what happens outside of you. This process trains your brain to look for more reasons to be grateful. Which then brings you more opportunities to experience gratitude outside of you in the form of money, relationships, etc. To tie it all together, what you thank about, you bring about.
The Recipe For Abundance
Clearly define what you desire and write it down.
Close your eyes and reflect on three things you are grateful for. It's essential to truly feel gratitude in your body.
Visualize your goal or desire as if it has already been achieved. Imagine it's a reality in the present, not just a future event.
Spend at least two minutes in a state of gratitude for having achieved your goal. This may feel like you’re pretending but it still works!
Repeat, again and again…and again! Your brain learns through repetition. Eventually this thought and emotional pattern will become habitual.
Final Thoughts
You have the power to create abundance in your life by focusing your thoughts on the things you genuinely desire and feeling grateful that you already have them. Though it may feel like pretend at first, your brain does not know the difference. So use the recipe above to enlist the help of your brain and body towards the achievement of your goals and desires.
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