A Holiday Gratitude Challenge: Are YOU up for it?

Gratitude is a gift! It’s a powerful internal healing elixir capable of reviving your soul and generating new energy into your life. This is a gift available to you right now and in every moment!

Whether things are going well in your life or if your circumstances challenge you to the core, there is something more powerful than any medicine, more effective than any counseling, and more immediately beneficial to the spirit: GRATITUDE. Don’t believe it? I encourage you to just try it!

Here is my holiday challenge for you: I challenge you to wake up the next 14 days and begin each day either writing down, verbalizing or mentally reviewing at least 10 blessings in your life. When you begin your day in this empowering way, you pave the way for even greater blessings to flow your way.

Even if you aren’t sensing that you have much to be grateful for, you can choose to shift your focus from any sense of lack, sadness, or even loneliness you may feel or experience, to a liberating, expansive feeling of gratitude for everything that IS beautiful and positive in your life. Feeling gratitude for something or someone attracts more of that something or someone into your experience. Therefore, to add more of what you desire into your day to day existence, you simply have to focus on genuinely appreciating and valuing that which you want more of! Gratitude is the divine tool you can use to add positive energy to existing energy that is already in your world.

The reality is that you can liken yourself to a giant magnet continuously attracting more of the same energy that you are emitting out into your environment. Whatever you are feeling, whether it’s love, fear, anger, frustration, bliss, joy, gratitude or resistance, you are in essence creating a magnetic force that attracts and draws to you the events, conditions and circumstances which directly correspond to what you are feeling.

Fearing something creates a magnetic force that attracts more of what you fear into your life. Feeling gratitude projects a magnetic force that draws to you more of what you are expressing gratitude for. Gratitude puts you in a harmonious vibrational resonance which naturally attracts additional energies that are in alignment with that which you are grateful for. It’s actually a phenomenally beautiful process that never fails.

So, what do you have to lose? Nothing. In fact, you have everything to gain. You may be wondering “How in the world can I be in a state of gratitude when so much seems to be going wrong in my life?” If you dig down a bit deeper and analyze this a little further, you will emerge with a crystal clear understanding of what is actually happening. First of all, it’s important to recognize the importance of accepting responsibility for whatever is going on in your life. Yes, I know this isn’t easy! The events, conditions, and circumstances that you are currently experiencing are manifestations of thoughts and emotions that you have chosen (subconsciously or at a soul level) as well as choices you have made at some point in the past. Those thoughts, emotions, and choices represent the seeds of creation that eventually manifest into your reality.

Remember, you are the one that thinks your thoughts. Your thoughts do not think you! In the same way, your emotions serve as a gauge and are a reflection of the quality of thoughts that you are thinking. Just to clarify, I know you don’t consciously choose chaos. What happens is that without realizing it, you are placing your attention and focus on what you don’t want! What you consistently place your focus on”? whether it’s illness, poverty, fear, or joy, love, and wealth, you will absolutely draw into your experience.

Since your current outcomes are based on what you have thought and felt consistently at some point in the past and those outcomes are now being experienced in your life, guess who created them? YOU did! Although that may not make you feel any better about them just yet, consider this…

Since it is you that is responsible for attracting and creating undesirable outcomes, then isn’t it also possible to change the thoughts and emotions responsible for creating them which will produce a desired result? Absolutely! Simply recognizing the fact that you brought them into your life (not rationally or consciously, but without awareness) provides you with an understanding of your immense creative power. This is exciting to realize. This awareness can be the catalyst that instills a new sense of gratitude for the power of choice that you have to create your life in whatever way you choose!

When you allow yourself to feel joy and gratitude for even the things that you might consider small or insignificant, you allow for even greater things to enter your experience. It boils down to appreciating the blessings that you are currently experiencing and noticing in your life knowing that this paves the way for greater blessings to follow.

When you consciously direct your attention and focus to what’s “working” in your life, you hold yourself in that beautiful energetic space. The act of appreciating someone or something can be likened to nurturing a seedling with sunshine! You are giving that “seed of desire” the positive energy it needs to sustain itself and grow!

When you choose to believe in someone or something, miracles begin to happen.

Offering unconditional love provides the space for anything to thrive and grow. As we approach 2014, this is the ideal time to nurture your environment, your business, your family, and your loved ones with love. It is also the ideal time to nurture yourself with self love, self acceptance, and compassion.

Embracing an attitude of gratitude begins a beautiful cycle in which you attract even more things to be grateful for. Therefore, even if it seems as though there are areas in your life in which you struggle or feel challenged, just remember that you can choose to focus on the things that are going well. In doing so, you step into the driver’s seat and you become a conscious creator, drawing more success, joy, and LOVE into your life experience.

The bottom line is this: The act of feeling grateful keeps you in energetic/vibrational harmony with your desires! It is only natural to feel sad or disappointed at times. The key is to feel through that emotion and then move forward without dwelling on that emotional space any longer than you have to. When you feel, allow, and accept those emotions- they gain the freedom to pass through you. In that space, you have room to expand and focus on what IS WORKING AND WHAT YOU DO WANT.

Ask yourself what you’re grateful for in your life. Feel and extend sincere thanks for those individuals, situations and events. Truly FEEL the joy and allow yourself to linger in that space and soak up the powerful, radiant energies that stem from this state of gratitude and bliss. Now, remember that feeling, and purposely and intentionally return to it throughout your day.

I choose to continue to live by one of my favorite mantras: “Count your blessings and watch them multiply.” May you experience the power of this mantra for yourselves. Wishing you abundant blessings this holiday season and plenty to be thankful for!

With Love and Gratitude,

Cari