Maybe you have seen my daily gratitude posts on Facebook (come and find me, if we are not connected yet).

Gratitude is doing a home run in my life, and is spreading into the Life Alchemy course as well. And very rightly so. And I want to share with you too.

The first time I became aware of the power of gratitude, it took me by surprise.

It was 2010. Ten years since I had been trying to become a mum. It was a very deep yearning, and there were a lot of things not lining up, again and again. It was so painful for a very long time. But in 2010, the unbelievable happened, and me and my now husband became pregnant.

We were over the moon. Literally. So so happy.

But when we went in for the 12 week ultrasound, we found that the baby’s heart had stopped beating.

It was excruciating. We felt numb and went through what needed to happen next holding each other tightly. We were grieving.

And then, oddly enough, after only a few weeks, I felt gratitude for this very short pregnancy. For this soul that came by briefly, to let me know: IT IS POSSIBLE!

All throughout the ten years of living with that unfulfilled yearning, it was unclear if I even could become pregnant.

So now, I found myself feeling so, so grateful. And even though there was another medical hiccup on the way, the pregnancy of our healthy daughter started only four months later.

And we are – I am – still beyond grateful for her arrival. Every day I feel that wave of emotion runs through me when she is fast asleep and I kiss her goodnight.

~

There was nothing deliberate about this gratitude, it just happened on me. And what a difference it made. People around me were worried I would be shattered with yet another negative experience. But I just wasn’t.

Later on, I read how feeling gratitude is a defining quality for people that are predominantly happy. It also has a very high correlation with bringing abundance into your life, in every sense of the word.

You see, the opposite of gratitude, is entitlement. Where we feel we have a right to whatever it is we want. We feel we deserve it. It harbours discontentment when our longings are not met. It breeds comparisons of why they, why not me. And, when our longings are met, it makes it hard to actually receive them. Receive them fully, with joy, and celebrate their existence. I had been living in that entitlement energy: if everyone else can have a child, then why can’t I?

Opening up to gratitude in your life is a powerful medicine.

It is like a muscle, you can flex it and practice.

A daily gratitude practice is a very powerful way of inviting more joy in your life.

So, I invite you to try it.

Every day, find a moment to express one thing you feel grateful for. It can be a tiny thing, like the way the rays of the sun shine into your living room. It can be a big thing, like that kiss goodnight.

And to really start bring on the magic, when you express that thing you are grateful for, make it really explicit. Describe it for yourself in a way that makes you feel grateful in that moment.

(This makes all the difference. Before I started my gratitude practice on Facebook, I’d been thinking of three things I was grateful for every night, just before going to sleep for years. It was okay, but nowhere near as life transforming. Because all I did was think of it, not feel it.)

In my Facebook practice, there is an added bonus of connecting from this gratitude energy to others, and it’s been really beautiful to see how people respond to that energy. Also, the visibility helps me to keep myself accountable. So this practice works for me.

And of course there are many other ways to do it.

When you get in the habit of a gratitude practice, you will find that you will spot more things to be grateful for during your days. You will feel that energy of gratitude running through you more and more often. And when that starts to happen, you might even get to experience that ‘bliss high’, where you can be high on life, on pure joy. I highly recommend it 🙂

And all of this, without anything big needing to change in your life first. (Though you might find it will usher in changes for you, as your energy will be very different.)

So go and try it.

And tell us in our Facebook group what you find!

So much love,

Annemiek