Can you imagine being head-over-heels in love with your life?
For the longest time, I could not.
I was frustrated, overwhelmed, fearful and angry that my life hadn’t turned out the way I had imagined. I felt stuck and disappointed and I tried to put on a happy face, but that didn’t help.
Then a friend of mine told me about The Power of Gratitude and it changed my whole world.
Gratitude is not just a nice feeling, it is a FORCE. It is a power. It opens up new creative energy channels, and shakes up old beliefs. It dissolves limiting habits.
I was living in an old apartment, one room with one window. I complained about it constantly. I thought I deserved better. I had dedicated my life to God and I couldn’t figure out why my life pictured poverty. I was stuck and I tried praying and meditating and visualization, but that didn’t change a thing. I kept wishing things would change.
I had very little money. I was deep in debt. I often didn’t even have money to put gas in my car, so I would ask people to give me rides to the places I needed to go. I remember going to the supermarket with change and one or two dollars, trying to figure out what I could buy. Whenever I did get money, the first thing I would buy is cat food. I put the cats first. All the while I kept complaining and whining how “I have no money.”
I should have been putting God first, but I was so deep in fear that I didn’t have my priorities straight.
Finally, a good friend said to me:
“LISA … GET OVER YOURSELF.”
HA! That got my attention! Often, I think the best thing that can happen in life is a good swift kick in the pants!
She told me I was ungrateful and a complainer, and that she was tired of listening to me.
That was the greatest gift anyone has ever given to me.
She said the universe could not give me anything new until I was in complete over-the-top appreciation and gratitude for the place I was currently in.
She said I needed to start to see my room as a palace, and feel real gratitude for it and to stop wishing my life was different.
She said I needed to fall in love with my life, as it was, right in that moment.
She said that I needed to find things to be grateful for – not a superficial gratitude – but REAL enthusiasm and excitement and joy for all that was in my life.
She said I needed to see with new eyes.
I “knew” all this on an intellectual level, but until that moment I never really “got” it.
In that moment, I got it.
I went and bought as much cleaning supplies as I could with all the money I had (about $15), and I whipped my home into shape. It was no longer a room I hated. It was my home that I loved. It was my sanctuary. I cleaned like never before and I fell in love with my life that day. I started to count my blessings and I noticed how much I had overlooked how RICH I truly was. I HAD EVERYTHING!! I had the most amazing people in my life. I had A Course in Miracles which had healed me of addiction and alcoholism. I had my books, my family, the grass, the air, my cats, my health. I had Jesus. I kept finding more things to be grateful for. I was grateful to my friend Max who bought me coffee every day at Starbucks and made me laugh.
I fell so completely in love with my room that I felt I could have lived there forever. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I loved my life. I felt so much gratitude that I thought my heart would burst. I had my big sunny window, my big beautiful bed, a great computer, internet, and I was inspired daily. I had great friends and I had God, and incredible teachers.
This is what the bible means when it says: I was blind, but now I see.
I felt new possibilities for my life. I was not a victim anymore and I felt connected in a way I’d never felt before (this was 2008). I started waking up in the morning with a feeling of excitement, and I would bounce out of bed, ready for all the surprises the day would bring.
I felt like I had “arrived.” I felt like “I have it all.”
Within weeks of EVERY-DAY-GRATITUDE, the picture of my life changed. Out of the blue, I got invited to be the innkeeper for a beautiful new house on 10 acres on a lake, with a salary – a job I have always wanted but didn’t think was possible for me because I felt I would never have enough money to buy a house. And it was just given to me.
So I wanted to share this story with you. GRATITUDE IS A FORCE.
It has to be real in order to shift your life.
I often hear people say “I’m grateful” and I know it’s just words, there’s no energy in it – that’s not the gratitude that I am talking about.
Silent Gratitude is not much use to anyone, including yourself.
You really want to FEEL IT and SHARE IT and TELL OTHERS ABOUT IT.
I am talking about gratitude that fills you with excitement and possibility and enthusiasm – and you feel like you want to tell everyone you meet that you love them.
You will know the difference when you experience it.
True Gratitude bubbles over. That’s when the mountains of old grievances that have buried inside you start to shake up and dissolve.
The FEELING of gratitude is the most powerful spiritual energy you can tap into, and it will change your life, practically overnight.
If you feel stuck and want to be unstuck, gratitude is the answer.
Don’t wait for things to change.
Get the energy moving by falling in love with your life, exactly the way it is now. Find things to be grateful for. Find things to be excited about. Feel like a child again, with your eyes open to the splendor of all that is around you.
Today is the day to fall in love with your life.
Love,
Lisa
If you have a story of how gratitude transformed your life, we would love to hear it. Please post it in the comments below. Thank you for sharing and commenting.
Hi Lisa
Thanks for you post. It brought some happy tears to the eyes. I so could use an experience of gratitude. There is soooo! much good “stuff” in this/my life, but somehow there is also pity-party as well. Perhaps I could ask the ministers-to-be if there could be some prayer for perception correction in this area.
I’m grateful for you Robert.
This fabulous post came as I was journaling this morning. It inspired me to spend my final minutes writing about my gratitude. Once begun I could have written forever. What an angel message. I am so grateful !!
Hi Lisa
Thank you for this post. Sometimes we know these things, we just need a reminder. This
Hi Lisa
Thank you for this post. Sometimes we know these things, we just need a reminder and this reminder came at just the right moment for me. Gratitude xx
Sorry about above post. Had a bit of trouble with this.
A FORCE !!!…..now that’s a real gear-shifter…..a shift from perception through the senses to SEEING, with the awareness that God is in everything; a shift from appreciation to LOVING.
Lisa, your down to earth LOVE sings to me.
Thanks for that Lisa… Lately I have been exactly where you were before.. I will start looking at what is positive in my life instead of getting mired in worry and negativity!!
As always what you need to hear is sent perfectly.Re-doing the woorkbook and am on lesson 176.The last few days have been kind of lack luster and doing the lesson petering out to nothing by the end of the day.Can see why now as there was no gratitude behind God is but Love,and therefore so am I. There is no death the Son of God is free.(How could I not have immense gratitude for that one? đ ) God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Now we are one with Him who is our source. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.Thank you Lisa,acim,jesus,god and life.And thank you for allowing me to get my hourly lesson in while writing this at the same time.haha.
I remember many years ago (13) I suddenly got very sick, really bad, and I had no energy to leave my bed and go to bathroom, not a very good situation.
But after I while I started to give thanks for different things like that there was a schoolbus taking my daughter to school every morning, that Imy bed was safely in place every morning, my house was warm, that I had medicines, my daughter made my bed with new sheets (pink!) so that I would feel good (and I really did!). When I became better and could go down in my kitchen in the morning, I gave thanks for water in the spring, that I could make me nice coffee and one day I really was grateful when I could walk to my mailbox down by the road.
This gratefulness was set in motion when I heard a priest say to someone that to start the day good one could say “go” instead of “no” when you wake up. This is a translation from my language where it was said: Say “takk” (thank you) instead of “akk” (alas or ay).
Well done Mrs. Løvlie! đ
I have many stories of how gratitude has transformed my life, but most recently I am grateful for the 40-Day Program that I completed recently. As a result of that program I am no longer bogged down anxiety, worry, doubt….I just do what enee
needs to be done and move on. Life is easy and breezy and I have accomplished things that had been weighing on my for months! I organized my basement storeroom that was so full of junk that I couldn’t even walk into it. I got my taxes done and found out I was due a $5000 refund and that I qualified for a tax credit I didn’t know about, so I went back and amended my taxes for last year to get another $1000. I got piles and files of paperwork cleaned out. Best of all, I have improved relationships with my 3 teenagers. I’m no longer sucked into their drama. Instead, I enjoy them every day!
Thank you, Namaste
I felt so related to this story Lisa, and Iâm grateful.
Since I was little I did my best, trying to please everybody, and God was included.
I thought that I was good, and grateful and clever⌠but⌠everything was always the opposite of what I wanted or asked/prayed for.
I did meditation, visualization, etc. I was in my thirties when all the âsecretâ boom happened, and yes, ACIM as well.
But I felt empty, painful and sad, I´ve been divorce for 10 years and it seems that I can´t move forward⌠I havenât been able to thrive, to provide for my daughter and to live a happy life.
I started a couple of bossiness and did not work. No relationships, no friends, sometimes I felt that I was in Siberia because I felt so lonely, I couldnât talk to anybody without cryingâŚ
I was a disaster!
And yes, I was grateful, but not that kind of thankful, not that kind you described today!!! How can things are masked until I asked for help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So this is something else I´m grateful today!!!!!!!!
Thank you again!!!!!
Yes ! Gratitude is a powerful mental construct ! Therefore a force of immense creative power . Gratitude is not only mental realisation –it is the e–motion ( enery in motion ) that is the fuel of creativity !
Thank you dear Lisa for being such a power of strength and light and love !
Wow. Thank you. I love these messages! I especially loved what Delia you said about that you were thankful but not this kind of thankful that I describe – and that is PRECISELY what my difficulty always was I was “grateful” but it was more like words that didn’t mean anything. There was no feeling to it. I wasn’t grateful as an EMOTION, as enthusiasm, as joy, as an energy that made me fly out of bed in the morning. Once I reached THAT place of thankfulness, everything changed.
I need reminders daily.
Lisa, Love this idea of a blog for overflowing gratitude! Gratitude has transformed my mind and my life many times…there’s power in it for sure.
This is so wonderful, thank you Lisa. This can be applied to everything in our lives… my husband’s family is in conflict and has been for years, with lawyers and stuff involved, and so often I’ve wished and yearned that it were otherwise. Inner whining and victim-hood really đ I’m going to change that and be deeply grateful for all of it – for what it has taught me, for all the good that has come about amidst it – my husband through this conflict has developed something that is making a huge difference in education in our country, helping many young people. That’s just one of the blessings to be counted!! I feel my heart opening just thinking about it! Gratitude is indeed a palpable FORCE! <3
Thank You so much Lisa!!! I Am so Gratefull !!! AND it is the Desire for Peace Above all else and then… “Act As If”…. or as I Like to refer to it as… “Priming the Love Pump”… I AM Gratefull… then I Am… I Am Peacefull … then I Am. Initially in my more stubborn moments… it feels like “faking a feeling of Happy”…. and initially… for a moment… it might be occurring that way… Then ‘my thinking and speaking’, however fake they started out… Become Very Real…. So My Main trajectory these days… “Happy”… the “gold standard”… Much Love My Sweet Friend!!!!
Thank you, thank you thank you. I so needed this reminder today….i Am so grateful for,your message, so appreciative. Just lovely many many blessing to you. Julia
Thank you Lisa,
Very appreciative for this wonderful reminder.
Many times we do forget how much blessed we are
and just take love and blessings for granted.
Jj
Thank you so much, Lisa! I have had the similar situation at this moment since two bad marriages. I have put myself in such situation for over 4 years. I hope one day I will wake up from these nightmares. Thank you for your enlightened words.
So that’s what it means. Every morning my boyfriend wakes up and greets me with a smile, an I love you.beautiful and a cup of coffee in bed. I ask him often about the overwhelming sense of happiness he exudes and the answer to me is always the same. “Life is just so good! ” I didn’t get it till I read this. Gratitude has been more of a “to do” list than the all consuming love for everything and everyone. But I tell you what…I’m grateful and giddy about it today because I recognize that all my problems have been solved. Nothing can pull me from the peace of God. Thank you my fellow children of God for sharing your light and holding it up for the rest of us to find our way! I love you!! !!!!!
Thank you for your ability to be so clear…I have heard this all before, and the way you were able to express it has met me “where I am today”. Divine Right Timing…Thank you!