A New Type of Gratitude

This blog is called "Change Your Life in 10 Minutes a Day" -- and I found a new technique, a new practice, that really can do that.

It's a truism in the New Age community that the 'attitude of gratitude' helps power the Law of Attraction, which simply says that what you focus on expands. So if you're focusing on what you are grateful for, then you'll get more of that.

The problem with this is that if you are only focusing on things you are grateful for, you tend to sweep the less positive things under the rug. And what you ignore, endures. That is, by not dealing with it, by leaving it there in your psyche, your energy body, it attracts more of itself to you, too.

A couple of months ago, I happened upon Melody Beattie's "Make Miracles in Forty Days". Beattie is famous for her books about co-dependence, which are very clear. This is completely different. In it, she talks about how, by admitting how bad things are, you can start to turn things around.

Her process is very simple. Each day, you spend 10 minutes writing what you are grateful for. The twist is that you are also grateful for seemingly negative events and circumstances, as well as the emotions around them. For example, here is part of what I was grateful for, as I wrote in the first post in my gratitude journal after learning the process (Jan. 29, 2011):

• I am unable to lose weight
• I’ve mostly given up trying to lose weight, because I exercise and I've tried everything (low cal, low fat, low carb), stuck to it, and nothing's worked.
• I dislike my body at this weight

Now it's been more than 40 days, and I've been losing a pound a week for about 8 weeks. Yes, there is a real world mechanism here, which I'd rather not go into, and it is still a sort of miracle. 

More than that, though, is that there is a sort of peace from admitting this stuff, even if only to myself. I'd say the process works. Try it for yourself and see!

Here's the process:

Take 10 minutes every morning (I set a timer) and write the date and then:

"Today I am grateful that:

[Insert the good and bad here. Beattie used bullet points, and within each one could use multiple sentences.]

"Thank you for all that!"

That's it -- that's the whole process.

Obviously, in her book, Beattie elaborates more than this -- and it's still a very short book. It might take an hour and a half to read. Makes great bathroom reading, too, as it doesn't go overly deep.

 

If you try it please let me know what happens.