What Is Gratitude? A Simple Explanation

Ever heard of the book and the movie “The Secret”? Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, I am sure that you’ve heard of it and probably even read the book or at least watched the movie. It was all the rave about 10 years ago! Everyone was talking about it (well, everyone still talks about it today) because it boasted what people perceived as an easy way to get things in your life that you want.

I discovered the movie on YouTube in 2013 and it really intrigued me because I was already in the very early stages of curiously learning about the Law of Attraction and manifesting. Because of the movie “The Secret”, I kept digging further and further into Universal Laws and discovered Dr. Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Abraham Hicks, Jack Canfield, and more. I was in a dark space in my life back then, but as I read these authors books and watched their YouTube videos daily, I instantly felt more empowered as I became a student of attraction and manifestation.

One of the concepts that I learned early on in my journey, and that I credit as having changed my life the most was the Law of Gratitude. As per www.dictionary.com the definition of gratitude is: “a feeling of thankfulness or appreciation, as for gifts or favors”. In that definition, the word “feeling” is the key because feelings create our energy and our energy is what attracts things, circumstances, people, positive and negative experiences into our lives. So, the more I learned about The Law Of Attraction and how to use it to manifest what I wanted, I realized that what we’re feeling plays a huge part in what we are manifesting. And that’s why I chose to intentionally leverage gratitude to redirect my thoughts which subsequently changed my negative feelings to positive so that I could radiate positive energy that attracted the things that I wanted in my life.

So, what is gratitude?

Gratitude is the conscious state of being and feeling thankful. It is the action of focusing on the things that you are grateful for. It is a very powerful shift of your mental state because unconsciously, we tend to focus on what we don’t have and what we want. However, the Law Of Attraction states that of which you focus on is what you will attract. So, whatever it is that you allow your mind and emotions to fester on will eventually happen - that’s called manifestation. Once you learn how you are manifesting things in your life (the good and the bad), you will realize that your beliefs, thoughts, words/conversations, and feelings should not be consumed by what do DO NOT wish to experience. But, this is not easily done. Our society has cultivated an environment that feasts off of fear, complaining, negativity, limitations, gossip, criticizing, fault finding, scarcity, and (I mean I could go on, but y’all get the point); so thinking about all of the negatives and potential problems is the first thought that naturally pops in to most of our minds. However, if you want to stop attracting the things and experiences that you don’t want, you’re going to have to learn how to take control of your own thought pattern and intentionally shift your mindset to happier and more positive thoughts.

That’s where gratitude comes in!

As I stated above, gratitude is the state of consciously being and feeling thankful. So, if you incorporate gratitude practices in your daily routine, it allows you to take time out to intentionally focus on the things that you are thankful for. Many of these things that we are thankful for get overlooked and we take them for granted because we are so trained to see all of the negatives of life. But practicing gratitude will allow you to carve out time to shift your thoughts to that of which you should be grateful for. And if you practice gratitude consistently, over time you will start to retrain your brain from naturally thinking of the negative worst case scenarios to focusing on the positive, possibilities, and beauty of your everyday life. The more you think positive, the more positive things happen to you. The more you focus on what you do want, the more of what you do want happens to you. When you learn to control your mind and direct your OWN thoughts, you will successfully become the curator of your life experiences. Life will no longer happen TO you, it will happen because of you.

So, now that I’ve answered the “What is Gratitude” question, I hope you all decide to leverage it in your life and use it as a tool to help you start manifesting things in your life that you want. If you want to take your power back and influence your own life’s experiences, you can get the directions on how to start practicing gratitude in the Life Hack Headquarters. This is where I store and share all of the free resources and online courses, so click here if you want access.

Living the life that you want is not as hard to do as it seems. I hope you believe in your own power enough to take a leap and start practicing gratitude because it costs you nothing to learn how to focus on all you have to be thankful for, and the reward is a life of abundant happiness, fulfillment, and prosperity.

Love ya, mean it!

Breezy Phoenix