Gratitude is simply being happy and grateful for what you have. This also might seem obvious, but when was the last time you practiced deliberate gratitude? Why should this matter anyway? Well, think of this, if you go to bed resentful and angry what happens? Chances are at the very least, you don’t sleep well. Then how do you wake up? Feeling crap very likely. So how does your day go then? I’ve never started a day feeling crap that ended well, that I can recall.

If you want to have a life of brilliance and joy, it starts with creating that world “inside” now. In India there are millions of people who have pretty much nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. No food, no water, no clothes and no prospects. Your life in comparison, no matter how hard it may be, is a paradise compared to that.

Yet, many of those millions smile easily and happily. It is not because they are smoking something you are not, it is simply that you and they have made different choices about how to deal with life’s adversities.

The difference is that when we grateful we are more open to something good happening,  rather than just griping about the mortgage not being paid or whatever the problem is. We create a vibration that the universe responds to. It responds to all our vibrations, so let’s choose the good ones.

In Lynn McTaggart’s amazing book “The Intention Experiment” she explains that science is finding that our intention affects the world around us in a measurable and provable manner. It all boils down to coherent emotion. The best way to develop coherent emotion to start creating the world we desire, is gratitude.

It creates a space within us for more beauty and joy. Doesn’t that sound a whole lot better than whining and moaning? The moaning will only give you more things to moan about, but the gratitude will bring you more things to be grateful for.

Try this exercise for a week and see how you feel: write down every evening 10 things you are grateful for during the day, they can be as “small” as you liked the sun shining on your face, to as large as you want. If you find it tough to come up with 10 things, then that says something already doesn’t it?

I’m grateful you’ve read this and for every day of my life and all my challenges and problems that teach me so much and how to be a bigger, better version of me.

“Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.”

Doris Day