Dear %%FIRST_NAME%%,
Welcome to week two!
Today I want to share with you one of my favourite insider secrets for weaving gratitude into your daily life – effortlessly. And it’s much easier than you might think. 🙂
“Don’t wait to say thank you for the big stuff. Start with the smallest seed and watch the miracles grow.”
It’s easy to say thank you for the big stuff in life. And it can be a great place to start, especially on days when gratitude feels like it’s a million miles away. Biggies like “I feel grateful that I am alive,” are really important, but there’s a simpler way to fast-track your experience of gratitude – and to allow it to work its miracles in your life.
The real life-changing impact of gratitude practices is felt most strongly when we say thank you for everything, getting really specific, even the smallest seed.
In fact, it’s even more potent if we can get to a place of saying thank you for things we don’t feel happy about – but there’s no rush on that one!
That seed was planted in fertile soil. It was watered and nourished and nurtured. It grew bigger and stronger, until it finally bore fruit. And those fruits created more seeds to continue the cycle.
The smallest thing can sometimes make the biggest difference and we never know where the ripple effect will end.
When we are on the receiving end of an act of kindness or generosity – or when we do something kind for someone else – it can touch lives that reach far beyond what we might expect. When we look back at life, it is often those actions that would normally seem insignificant that had the most profound impact for us. So don’t wait for the big stuff, before you say thank you. How about saying thank you for the tiny seeds, too.
Is there somewhere in your life where remembering this might help you today?
There’s no point waiting to start with the big stuff!
This week, I invite you to dive in and let yourself spot the tiny things you can feel thankful for – and watch the magic happen.
Week Two Gratitude Project – Bedtime Gratitude Spiral
For the week two project, we’re moving on to a variation of last week’s gratitude project, but with a tweak that makes it one of my favourites! A full ‘how to’ is at the bottom of today’s message. Here’s a quick tour of how it helps and why it’s so potent.
Sometimes it can feel hard to fall asleep. If we’re feeling stressed or our mind is running over the events of the day, sleep can feel like a distant promise – and gratitude might well be the last thing on your mind.
If you find that ‘life’ is keeping on going round and round in your head, the Bedtime Gratitude Spiral can help you to put those worries aside and move your thoughts to a happier space.
The last thing we think about at night – and the last emotion we’re feeling – can have a major impact on the quality of our sleep.
It’s as though those final pre-sleep thoughts give our mind an unconscious message about where to tune its radio station; about what to focus on for the next few hours. It takes this as an instruction to send us dreams that match the emotions we were feeling as we fell asleep. We often wake up still feeling those emotions.
Consciously creating a happy, grateful mood as we fall asleep can make a big difference.
It’s easier than you might think. In fact, you’ve been training yourself to do it, over the past week.
It’s not about pretending that everything is ‘ok’, even if you’re convinced that it’s not. It’s not about ‘rejecting’ any worries or negative thoughts you have been having. It is about allowing happier thoughts to creep in and have centre stage for a few minutes.
And one of the simplest and most effective ways to achieve this is to think of things that we feel grateful for. Just imagine how the quality of your sleep could improve, if you do this last thing at night?!
Full instructions are below. It only takes a few minutes. Enjoy!
Gracias,
Namaste,
Here’s Your Week Two Project & Useful Links
Bedtime Gratitude Spiral
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- Before you fall asleep, choose three things you feel grateful for, to use for this exercise.
It might be something that happened during the day; it might be something from your gratitude jar. It doesn’t really matter what you choose, as long as it helps you to connect with the feeling of gratitude in your heart. - Allow yourself to gently rest in the feeling of gratitude for the first thing.
- Really experience the grateful emotion. Feel the gratitude expanding and growing. Don’t force, just let it naturally work its magic.
- Really dive into the experience you are feeling grateful for. See what you would be seeing, if it were happening right now; hear what you would hear; feel the physical sensations that you would feel.
- Allow the intensity of your gratitude to increase, perhaps imagining that you have a dial you can use to turn up the feeling.
- If the feeling of gratitude starts to wane, move on to the second thing and repeat #2.
Then, just as you notice it start to wane, move onto your third thing. - You can keep going, if you want to, until you fall asleep.
- Notice how your mood is shifted.
Perhaps say a heart-felt ‘thank you’ to yourself, for choosing to do the Bedtime Gratitude Spiral.
It can help to anchor this process into part of your bedtime routine, to help you remember to do it. For example, you could tie it in with turning off your light. If you read before you sleep, you could anchor it in with putting the book down. Or you could choose to do it when your head touches the pillow.
You only need to do this for a few days and already you’re creating a life-long positive habit.
I’d love to hear your experiences of playing with this technique. Here’s a special discussion thread in the forum, for you to share your insights and ask any questions you may have: The Bedtime Gratitude Spiral.
Here’s the members-only community (private) and even the Facebook Page (public), where you can ask questions, share your experiences and support others who are joining in with the Miracle Of Gratitude.