Wake up your gratitude and goal setting practice

I’ve done the gratitude practice where I list out all that I am grateful for. 

I’ve done one where I focus on one thing that I’m grateful for each day. 

And when I've done them, I'd feel a slight opening in my heart center that resembles a smile, but mostly the exercises were intellectual and fleeting. 

Certainly there were days when gratitude was more deeply felt and days when it was more intellectual. But there were also days when I felt like this was just an exercise. I questioned my gratitude. I wondered if making a list of things I was grateful for was akin to my mom telling little me to say thank you when I wasn't feeling it.

So I abandoned the list and took up the practice of feeling into joy, wonder, and curiosity as life happens. 

• At mealtime, I’d take a moment to enjoy the aroma, colors, texture, and presentation of the food on my plate. 
• When someone gave me something, I’d feel into the generosity and thoughtfulness in their act of giving.
• I’d delight in seeing a call come through from someone I know, especially considering how infrequently people pick up the phone these days. Similarly, I delight when people pick up the phone when I call them! 
• Looking around at the same walls and objects in my home every day, I’m reminded that I manifested them all. I was given stewardship over them, and I get to appreciate them or pass them on to someone else who can.  

What is Gratitude?

Gratitude is joy, and joy is a way of life. This doesn’t mean you’re smiling and bouncy when bad, uncomfortable, or hard things come up. Not at all. Joy means you trust in yourself and in the Universe, and you do your due diligence by paying full attention to what’s important to you with enough detail, thoughtfulness and care.

I speak often about morning meditation as a game-changing practice that can shift everything in your life if you just let it. If you do this first thing in the morning before anything else, and if you do this early, you conquer time and space, and you nurture self discipline and constancy, setting a powerful tone for the rest of your day. This practice cultivates joy. 

Here’s how to carry your morning meditation practice - and joy - into your day

1. In your final minutes of meditation, sit with your eyes closed and think of one thing that you’re grateful for having, or having experienced, in your life. It could be from decades ago or the present moment. Choose something that allows you to tap into the pure joy of it. 
2. Keep delving deeper into that joyful experience long enough until you feel the joy in your body. 
3. Register this feeling into your body for recall anytime you need it. Give it a name so that when you call on it, you can access it. I call mine Freedom.  
4. Now carry that feeling of joy and gratitude into your next goal: what you want for today. Feel into it with that same joy and gratitude. Assume your desire has manifested, has your name on it, and is ready for pick it up. 

If you’re anything like past me - stuck in my head - it may take some days of practice to feel this in your body. But each day you do this, if you let it, you’ll start to feel it, which will light up the right signals in your brain to allow you to see through a new lens; one that sparks thoughts and actions that will help you create a life you love.

When you can access joy, you can have joy. When you have joy (when you pick it up), the Universe registers it and delivers more of it. No matter how bad things get, you have access to it. Practice tapping into it often to strengthen your access. You’ll be surprised how powerfully this works.

Why this works

Have you heard the saying your prayers are always answered? (I used to call b.s. on this.)

It’s important to know that your thoughts are prayers (this changed everything for me). 

Prayers aren’t necessarily when you bring your hands together with your eyes closed and ask for things to happen. It depends on what’s happening inside you when you “pray.”

Your beliefs, feelings, thoughts, actions - wherever you put your attention - are prayers that reach the Universe much, much more powerfully than anything you ask for in going-through-the-motions prayers, intellectual practices, business planning, or wishing and hoping.

What you vibe is what you attract*.

• This is why we get more of what we’re currently experiencing, at least until we shift how we experience things.
• This is why your present state is so important.
• This is why the notion that when you attain something you will finally be happy is a myth.
• This is why spiritual teachers will tell you you’ll attain it when you choose happy. 

You have so much to gain and enjoy from this practice, if you let yourself, that you can’t lose.

Yes, life is filled with irritations and suffering, but also, it’s simultaneously filled with miracles, wonder, and pure joy. You get to choose where you dwell and how you respond to things. You get to decide to be in control of your circumstances, or if circumstances are in control of you. Remember that choosing joy doesn’t make you oblivious or powerless to turn suffering around. It makes you more able to do so. 

Love, Savitree

*If you want to vibe what you want to attract, practice Meditation to Realize Your Power, and then follow it up with how to carry your morning meditation practice and joy into your day (above).

Do this as a 40 day challenge, or join us live.