Taking control: How gratitude affect your health, wealth and relationships!

Gratitude is a lifestyle of appreciation wherein you choose to see good in you first, others and what life has offered. Gratitude positively affect your health, wealth and relationships and therefore is worthy of your attention to learn in order to change your life.

How gratitude impact your life positively!

Gratitude is one of the learned behaviours of people who seek spiritual enlightenment; the state of being aware of the values of the positive mind.  It is therapeutic in the sense that it maintains happiness which reverses illness like cancer.  Gratitude supports holistic wellness as follows:

1.      Wealth

·        It attracts wealth.  Grateful people get excited when they engage in business and they position themselves to succeed.  They have great tenacity to pursue their goals; as a result they increase their positive vibration towards attracting people and incidents that supports wealth.

·        It enables celebration of occurring incidents. Naturally positive emotion wears off within a short period. This emotional state could be greatly improved when appreciation is applied and result in keeping the emotion of the moment alive through daily affirmations. For an example, the euphoria of a new car will stay alive when you appreciate its benefits daily as you use it; thus allowing your state of joy to extend into the near and distant future.  

2.      Health

·        It blocks negative emotions.  Gratitude is a positive emotion which supports life.  Grateful people do not harbour negative emotions like anger, resentment and regrets because their philosophy is based on focusing on positive thinking.

·        Enables stress resilience.  Those who practice gratitude overcome traumatic experiences because they tend to find good in unpleasant situations.  For example, rather than engaging in road rage, it is ideal to be grateful that you avoided accident which could have caused bodily harm or damaged your car.  It has been proven that even when injured, grateful people recover faster because they appreciate life.

3.      Relationships

·        Readily forgives.  Relationships have a common hurdle – inability to let go offences. We all have relationships and because we are not always present to avoid engaging in negative thinking, we fail to maintain peace.

·        It lowers absenteeism in schools.  According to studies, students who were introduced to and practice gratitude had improved grades because they learnt to appreciate their teachers and have learned to be self-directed.  They tended to realize and appreciate that teachers spend hours preparing for lectures and marking assignments.

·        Supports environment.  Spiritually enlightened people understand the creation and their role to nurture the nature. They are aware of the gift of life and the need for mankind to co-exist with other species.

Gratitude is a practice of pure love hence is an ideal for holistic wellness.  It opens doors for success in wealth through increased vibrations. It improves relationships because it block negative thinking and encourages unconditional acceptance of self, others and environment.  The physical body operates at optimum level when is saturated with love which is demonstrated by gratitude.

Taking control: Endless struggle is not part of your plan!

Struggle is unpleasant incidents and challenges that retards expected progression of planned activities.  They reflect your inability to align your thoughts, words and actions.  While struggle is perceived as normal because we do not control everything; it should not characterize the quality of your life.

How to identify struggle!

In order to know when progress and efforts do not tally, you must have a clear written plan and its strategy of how you will achieve your goal. Struggle is not a minor deviations and delays caused by factors beyond your control.  It is clear unexplained inability to produce fruitful results.  It is when the law of cause and effect fail to manifest logical benefits.

Contributing factors of the struggle!

You have been socialized to nurture your physical self.  The society has established social institutions like schools that seek to empower you to learn necessary skills to attain sustainable comfort.  So, why are you experiencing struggle instead of comfort?

1. Do you have a career? If the answer is yes, then you have a basic tool according to the given norms.
2. Are you a normal person? A normal person has no physical limitation like a disabled one.  It is expected that you are doing something that aligned to your career and therefore you should be heading towards becoming what you have planned.  If not, it means you are getting unexpected results and beginning to question what it is you are doing wrong.
3. The missing link! This flesh that has been nurtured and given all necessary support is not you.  You are a spirit, with a soul living in a body! Now, how much do you know about your spirituality?  My guess is, very little! This is what I call a missing link.  How am I supposed to dig my treasure without appropriate tools?  In other words, if I am a spirit and have no idea what it its composition is and how it works, I am not close to operating from my strength.  Other societies are spiritual and their values and beliefs evolve around these and therefore are aware of the power of their spirituality.  For an example, they explain the function of seven non-physical attributes of spirituality called chakras that directly affect relationships, wealth and health.  Christians on the other hand follow Biblical principles to experience prosperity:

a)     Giving: Everything belongs to God and He wants you to give Him ten percent to further His work through believers. He wants you to remember that all creation belongs to Him and He gave you ability to create wealth. Tithing is a concept of maintaining communion with God.

b)     Love God and others: Being in the stated of positive regard attracts circumstances that promote and support your plans for accumulating wealth.

c)      Faith: It a strong belief in what is not seen – that God will comply with His promises because He has good thoughts and plans of good health and prosperity for you.

d)     Application of the law of the cause and effect: Give and it shall be given unto you. If you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly.

Endless struggle calls for your attention to those things that are not seen but manifest clear cues that all is not well in your life.  The global awareness of this concept came with universal law of attraction which says positive thoughts, words and actions equal to success. Knowledge is power! Do your own research and find a missing link that might explain why you are experiencing social and financial struggle in spite of all your efforts.

Taking control: What to do when joy and happiness is inaccessible!

Before you knew the meaning of a goal, you had a general view that you wanted to be happy; and that happiness will come as a result of purposely doing something to achieve it.  It is therefore an inborn desire to tirelessly seek until you find it.

General perception of joy and happiness!

Happiness is a positive emotional state and is not necessarily depended on other factors such as money or other material possession.  Joy is a lifestyle of continued state of happiness.  It is an attitude of choosing positive thoughts, words and actions which support and promote positive feelings.  It is for this reason that after the euphoria of fame for instance, the state of unhappiness will rear its ugly face and declare your need for professional help.  This demonstrates that joy and happiness are inclined to inward self determination than being responsive to good things that cause incidental positive emotion. 

What to do to access joy and happiness!

Often you look outside when you feel unhappy.  This is the first mistake which will set you up to fail repeatedly because your happiness and joy comes from within self.  When you do not get this right, you will set out to find something or someone who could make you happy.  If you are unhappy, you will carry your unhappiness with you into any relationship and environment – family, job, fitness club, even the church.  A tendency is to put all blame on the other party; yet you had your emotional issues which are still there regardless of other people’s attempts to meet you halfway by ignoring your controlling or manipulative behavior.  This means you need to know and internalize the truth; that if you carry a bad energy, it will ruin all things you become part of.  So, the remedy lies within you!  Let us consider the following:

1.      The law of love: The law of love is spiritual and says – Love your Creator first and love others as yourself.   It is easy to love your Creator because you can look at things He has given you – life, health, provision of things you need and could not produce without His assistance like high intellect, healthy babies, etc.  It is easy to love yourself; but it is challenging to love others unconditionally.

2.      The significance of loving others:  A law is binding and applies in all circumstances.  For an example; if your mother in-law hates you, you will likely be challenged to love her; and that will violate the law of loving others as yourself. Let me explain; you love yourself all the time – when you have done good things and when you made mistakes because your ego will surely reason it out and water-down your responsibility to love unlovable people who caused the conflict.  When you retaliate for any injustice, it does not tally with loving unconditionally.  In such incidents you are required to revisit the issue and consciously choose to forgive from your heart; meaning feeling joy as you let go hurting emotions. 

3.      Forgiveness leads to happiness and joy: The key to experiencing happiness and joy is forgiving all people who inflicted emotional pain.  It is also one of the key factors of attaining good health and access to wealth. If you read the Bible, God requires that you make peace with your brother before you approach Him about giving thanks and appreciation to Him.  This is hard but it is a law which opens doors for your happiness and joy.

The cost of experiencing joy and happiness is choosing not to harbor any negative emotion even if you have not provoked the other person.  In other words there is no excuse for not forgiving those who hurt you.  Successful maintenance of this virtue denotes spiritual maturity.  It is all about taking control of your life!