Top 5 Habits…

Even in the midst of extremely challenging circumstances, we can usually find something for which we are truly grateful. And best of all, the more we open our minds and hearts to appreciating what’s around us, the more good we see! In addition to helping us cope with challenges, this kind of grateful attitude can be contagious and is a wonderful life lesson to share with our kids.

Here are some suggestions for making gratitude a regular habit:

Keep a Gratitude Journal
Write down five things each day that you’re grateful for. At first, you might think that it would be hard to come up with different things each day, but you’d be surprised at how expressing gratitude in this way causes you to recognize that you have more to be thankful for than you ever could have imagined.

Express Your Thanks Out Loud
While you’re eating dinner with your kids, go around the table and share one or two things that you’re thankful for. What’s especially great about this simple habit is that your kids will inspire you to see things you hadn’t seen before.

Write a Letter of Thanks
Don’t keep your gratitude to yourself! When you feel thankful for certain people in your life, be bold enough to say it out loud or put it in a letter. One of the great tragedies in life is that, too often, we just don’t know what we mean to others. You can take one small step toward changing this by writing a letter of gratitude to an old friend, co-worker, mentor, or friend.

Be Grateful for the Challenging Times, Too
Share with your kids some of the challenging times you’ve gone through in life that you’re also grateful for. Some of these examples might relate to your parenting experiences. A simple example might be the sleepless nights you spent when your children were infants. It certainly wasn’t fun to be up most of the night, and it was hard to function at work the next day, but those moments of bonding together were also irreplaceable. What other examples can you think of? How have you grown through your most challenging experiences, and what good has come out of them?

Make it a Habit
Learning to be truly grateful can change your life. One way to continue a new “attitude of gratitude” is to create a habit around your thankfulness. For example, you might set aside a certain time of day to reflect on what you’re grateful for. Sometimes it can help to do something ritualistic at the same time, such as make yourself a cup of tea. Then, as you’re sipping the tea, consider what you’re grateful for. Each time you make a cup of tea, reflect on your gratitude. Over time, this will begin to seep into your everyday thinking, and you’ll realize that you have much in life to be grateful for!

By Jennifer Wolf - Jennifer is a PCI Certified Parent Coach and the mother of two children. In her private coaching practice, Pathways Parent Coach, LLC, Jennifer works to bring ongoing support and encouragement to busy, overwhelmed parents.

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[tags]gratitude, habits [/tags]

If Only…

So many times people become discontent with their lives and surroundings and is it any wonder? There is a whole industry set up to make us feel inadequate. We are not thin enough, or not rich enough, or not hip enough because we are not buying the latest products on the market. The message rings loud and clear: We are not good enough!!! .

How many times have you found yourself saying, “If only _________ then I could be happy “ The problem is that if we get caught up in this way of thinking we will never be happy because there is always something more we will think we need to complete our lives.

Paul Reid said, “Poverty is a state of mind often brought on by the neighbors new car” In other words, when we see our friends and neighbours acquiring things, we often feel poor because we cannot afford these luxuries. But, in reality we are not poverty stricken, we only think we are poor. This state of mind is purely relative to whom you are comparing yourself to. If you were to change your thinking and look at the homeless, then you would realize how truly rich you are. You have a roof over your head, and food on the table. Okay, so maybe it’s not your dream house and maybe you are eating peanut butter sandwiches and not caviar, but you are sheltered and fed. Believe it or not, some people do not even have these basics.

Most people do not realize the benefits of gratitude. When we sit and think about all the things we want but don’t have we set ourselves up in a downward spiral of disappointment and negative thinking which can lead to overwork, and depression. Gratitude, on the other hand, lifts our spirits and gives us a clearer focus on life as it really is. We will be content with what we have and therefore our attitude will bring us a spirit of peace and contentment.

You may say to yourself, but I don’t have much! Well then be thankful for the little things you do have. Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have someone who loves you? Do you have someone you love? Do you have food on your table? Do you have your health? Do you have a job? Do you have a pillow to sleep on?…a blanket to keep warm? Do you have your sanity? These are little things but even the smallest things we can be thankful for.

Someone once said, “If you haven’t all the things you want, at least be grateful for the things you don’t have that you wouldn’t want.”

There is always something we can find to be grateful for.

I know this sounds simplistic and I know that there are always things that many of us truly need…but if we start changing our attitudes and develop an attitude of gratitude then we will be in a better position to allow our positive thoughts to direct us in a way in which we can achieve more.

Gratitude is the first step in achieving the things you want to achieve in life. Viki King said, “You won’t be happy with more until you’re happy with what you’ve got.”

Let us make every effort to get rid of these negative thoughts that hinder our life’s journey and learn to develop positive thoughts that will help us achieve our goals.

Don’t wait until Thanksgiving rolls around each year to be thankful. Make it a point to develop in your daily life an attitude of Gratitude.

This article is bought to you by Sharron Myers

[tags] mind, grateful, thoughts [/tags]

Dominant Thoughts

What you focus on expands. Nothing could be more profound or truthful. What you focus on expands should be a rallying cry for all who want and are willing to pay the price to live the life they imagine. We are the sum total of all our thoughts.

Our dominant thoughts create the life we have lived up to this point and will create our futures as well. Make no mistake about it. This is not some New Age hocus-pocus. This principle has been around for centuries.

Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius said, “a man’s life is dyed by the color of his thoughts,” and the Buddha commented that, “All that a man is comes from his thoughts.”

All of us at one time have used this power of dominant thought, whether we realized it or not. When as I was about 12 or 13 years old, I really wanted to be a running back on my midget football team. Most of the time, I played on the offensive and defensive lines, but I set my sights on running back.

During the full three months of summer vacation, all I thought about morning, noon and night, was being the starting running back on the football team. Soon summer was over and we had our first practice. The coach asked us where we wanted to play and I said running back.Long story short, I won the starting position in tryouts and played the entire season as the starting fullback. All from my dominant thought over the summer.

That is just a minor example of the power of dominant thought. There have been larger and grand examples throughout history, like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan to name a few.

The important key to remember is it must be dominant thought. Half-hearted or fleeting thoughts will not bring about the desired intent. Only a thought that consumes you, that dominates your waking moments, is strong enough to make it become a reality.

Thoughts are things. Thoughts are electrical impulses and if a thought is strong enough it can reach out into the quantum field, which is also made up of various light vibrations (electrical impulses), and match you up with your desired thought. Like attracts like. This is a fact. If you couple your dominant thought with focused, confident action - life will give you whatever you ask.

About the Author

Brian Carson is a writer, Internet marketer and a self-improvement coach. He has created a new website that gives advice on success philosophy, resume creation and cover letter tips for job seekers/career changers. Visit his site at: http://www.writepowerfulresumes.com/center/index.html

Improve Your Mind

Gratitude or appreciation of what we already have is necessary to attract things we want. Every day when you wake up try to be thankful. Think about the good things in your live you should be thankful for.

Appreciate your job (even if you don’t like it). Feel gratitude for a place to live. If you have some food, some friends or anything else you can find to appreciate, appreciate it. A lot of people don’t have enough even basic things like food, water and their own place to live.

It’s natural that you want more, that you want to improve your standard of life, but first you need to feel gratitude for what you already have. If you start your day with feelings of gratitude you will feel good and you can keep that feeling all day. But you should also write down something like this: “I am so happy and grateful that…” and then write what you would like to have. For example: “I am very happy and grateful that I make $1 million per year; that I have wonderful and loving wife…etc.”

Use the present tense, visualize the things you want, be grateful for them, and think about them as already yours. When you achieve them, you can add new things to your list. When you write about money, start first with amount you believe is possible and then increase the amount when you got the amount you’d written down. Be specific.

When you start doing as described above, at first you might feel strange that you are using present tense for the things you want to have in the future, but it’s important to train your mind and force your mind to think about them in present tense. After some time of playing such “mental ping pong” your mind will obey and will help you to achieve the things you want.

By Krzysztof Sroka