Attracting Abundance

The Law

Two Doors to Success

Happiness - XVI

Appreciate

Appreciate what you have. You are privileged for what you have.

Expressing sincere gratitude is a very positive emotion. The qualification "sincere" is very important. An empty word of appreciation does not tingle our emotions. The words of appreciation must be heartfelt.

By the very fact of our current reality, we are enjoying some privileges. We have no problem with those who have less. We have problem with what we have because we tend to take these privileges for granted with our strong sense of entitlement making constraining us from recognizing what we have, We have greater problem with those who have more because that makes us feel under-privileged. The emotions associated with the last two closes our mind and heart. To create positivity we need to put a brake on such thinking. The best way to do is to start appreciating what you have. Everyday there are numerous experiences where someone behaved honestly with us, someone helped us to pick something up, someone opened the door for use, someone put a hot cup of tea in front of us after a hard day etc. Everyday we get the advantages from the gadgets in our houses where by a flick of a switch we get hot water, we talk to our near and dear ones who are far away on audio and video, we travel a great distance in comfort by hiring a car or driving our own car etc. After all we are privileged to be in a position to possess these gadgets. We have a group of people - family and friends - who provide support to us unquestioningly. We have a civic support system which maintains the roads and sewerage for us, provides us electricity, provided cheap public transport etc. We have lot of things to be thankful for. I insist that we put a structure in place for expressing our gratitude. 

Expressing gratitude is a very potent mindfulness - to be aware in the present - exercise. The mindful cultivation of gratitude is perhaps the most easily executable practice of staying and being aware of the present. It is also a strong antidote to counter mindsets of self-defeating thoughts, depression and a strong negative bias.

I am very clear when I say that the practice of appreciating or expressing gratitude does not mean denial of the difficulties and challenges of life. I am not saying that you close your eyes to the negatives for negatives are realities of life. Ignoring them, not learning from them is going to be suicidal. I am only suggesting that do not let the negatives drive out the joy and happiness from your life and overwhelm your life with feelings of loss, scarcity and fear. I treat the negatives as teachers. I have experienced many times that what appeared to be negative in the beginning turned out to be the launching pads for my growth. The practice of expressing gratitude gives me balance in the way I think and process stimuli. It gives me strength in the difficult times and gives me a boost always.

A Sufi Story

A man's  son captured a strong, beautiful, wild horse, and all the neighbors told the man how fortunate he was. The man patiently replied, "We will see." One day the horse threw the son who broke his leg, and all the neighbors told the man how cursed he was that the son had ever found the horse. Again the man answered, "We will see." Soon after the son broke his leg, soldiers came to the village and took away all the able-bodied young men, but the son was spared. When the man's friends told him how lucky the broken leg was, the man would only say, "We will see." 

Gratitude for participating in the mystery of life is like this.

In the practice of gratitude, you should notice things you are grateful for during your day. You do this not with the primary intention of feeling good but with the true intention of seeing things as they are. Those of you, who like me, had to stand in long queues in our earlier years for any thing and everything are surely aware of the irritation we felt, especially when the weather also played truant. Did you notice that in those very queues there were a few - very few indeed - who maintained their position calmly talking pleasantly to the next in queue. these were the persons who realized the true situation and did not permit that to upset the balance in their inner world? These were the people who appreciated the effort put in by the lone security man to maintain orderliness in the queue.

I quote from Phillip Moffit's article on gratitude. Phillip, was the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Magazine.

"You might ask yourself about your "gratitude ratio." Do you experience the good things in your life in true proportion to the bad things? Or do the bad things receive a disproportionate amount of your attention, such that you have a distorted sense of your life? It can be shocking to examine your life this way because you may begin to realize how you are being defined by an endless series of emotional reactions, many of which are based on relatively unimportant, temporary desires. When you look at how much griping you do versus how much gratitude you feel, you realize how far off your emotional response is from your real situation. The purpose of this inquiry is not to judge yourself but rather to motivate yourself to find a truer perspective. Why would you want to go around with a distorted view of your life, particularly when it makes you miserable?

Without instruction, reflecting on gratitude can seem boring or sentimental, evoking memories of your mother admonishing you to eat all the food on your plate. Part of the confusion is that many people have come to equate gratitude with obligation. But real gratitude begins as appreciation for that which has come into your life. Out of this appreciation, a natural, spontaneous emotion arises that is gratitude, which is often followed by generosity. When gratitude comes from indebtedness, by definition what's been given cannot have been a gift.

There is a shadow side to gratitude, in which reality gets distorted in yet another way. It manifests as a hopeless or helpless attitude disguised as gratitude, and it expresses itself in a self-defeating, passive voice-"Yes, these things are wrong and unfair, but I should be grateful for what I have," or "At least we have this," or "Compared to these people, look how much better off we are." This voice, whether it is an inner voice or comes from someone else, is not to be trusted. Gratitude is not an excuse for being passive in the face of personal or societal need or injustice. You are not excused from working to become a caring person, creating a better life for your loved ones, or protecting the innocent. Acknowledging the great gift of a human life through gratitude is just the opposite; it is a call to action to be a caring human being while acknowledging the folly of basing your happiness on the outcome of your actions."

I suggest a structure for acknowledging gratitude sincerely. I suggest this because we  need to build up a habit. I suggest that before going to bed every day thank that and those who have enriched you on that day. Better still to write it down in a diary. It should not take more than 10 minutes a day. Feel the boost of positivity that you get from this simple action.

Namaste

Prabir