Gratitude –The Ultimate Patriotic Act
During this time, when the financial news has become personal for everyone, it is easy to fall into a downward spiral of negative energy. The saying “misery loves company,” has never been so true.
Come on! Did we really expect that financing two wars would have no impact on our lifestyles? We empathize with those whose loved ones are in the military but, beyond that, we expect our own lives to go on completely unchanged. During the most intense fighting in Iraq, we were having an orgy of economic high times, buying gas-guzzling vehicles and homes with reckless abandon, refinancing already high debt as if the good times would never end. It didn’t make any sense and now we are faced with the ramifications of the choices we made.
After the 9/11 attack, we were told the most patriotic thing we could do was shop!
I beg to differ. The most patriotic thing any one of us can do is to live each day as an expression of gratitude for the freedoms we have been given and the abundance we enjoy.
If ever there were a time to leverage the Law of Attraction, this is it.
Those who made poor choices and are now in trouble financially knew, in their guts that they shouldn’t buy that fancy house or take on the debt of that new car. They ignored their Inner Guide.
We each of us have an Inner Guide that, when we pay attention, will lead us toward what is in our best interest. It is time to start paying attention.
Your Inner Guide cannot get your attention through your thoughts. You have too many of them whizzing through your mind at any given moment. Instead, it leads you through your emotions.
We call our emotions by all sorts of fancy names (joy, despair, passion, resignation) but there are really only two—negative and positive. When you are experiencing a positive emotion, it is your Inner Guide signaling that if you stay focused where you are focused, you are really going to like the results. When you experience a negative emotion, the message is “if you stay focused where you are focused, you are not going to like the results.” The stronger the emotion, the more quickly the results show up. That’s why passionate people have great lives and cynical people do not.
The quickest way to begin attracting what you want in your life is through the practice of gratitude. For military families, this is pretty simple. Every day their loved one survives the war is a good day. If you do not have someone in harm’s way in Iraq or Afghanistan, that’s the first thing to be grateful for.
If you insist on shopping, go out and buy an empty journal. Write on the front, “My Book of Gratitude” and write in it every day. This is the ultimate patriotic act because so much of what you have is because you live in an amazing country. It’s time to get clear about that. The more of us who do, the quicker the economy will turn around.
Acquiring things is a poor substitute for living–it is an attempt to fill an emptiness that cannot be filled with possessions. It is saying to the Universe, “There is not enough,” and we end up living in a state of dissatisfaction and attracting more of the same. As a nation, we have got to move from spoiled brats to grateful citizens.
It is when we immerse ourselves in the joy of life that we are demonstrating our gratitude for all it offers. It is when we enjoy our freedoms that we honor the men and women who fought (and continue to fight) so we can have them. And it is when we do everything in our power to focus on what’s good about our lives that we fully leverage the Law of Attraction.
My friend Nancy sent me a poster that said:
Dance like nobody’s watching
Love like you’ve never been hurt
Sing like nobody’s listening
Live like it’s heaven on earth
Mark Twain
Amen!
