The Gratitude Practice You Were Never Taught

A few months ago, I started reading the book Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza.

As it says on his website, Dispenza is a researcher, lecturer, author, and corporate consultant, and his interest lies in demystifying the mystical so that people have all the tools within their reach to make measurable changes in their lives. He’s an expert in the fields of neuroscience and neuroplasticity, quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG) measurements, epigenetics, mind-body medicine, and brain/heart coherence.

There are a lot of big words there, but all you really need to know is that I was immediately blown away by his stories, research, teachings and message, so much so, that I knew I wanted to start incorporating his work into my work to help my clients change their lives.

Now, I could write an email per day for a year and barely scratch the surface of the Dispenza-world, so today we’re focusing on one small piece of the manifesting puzzle: gratitude.

In Becoming Supernatural, Dispenza talks about gratitude in a way that made its superpowers more obvious to me than ever before, and I know what I share with you today is going to be transformational for you too.

Before we get into that, you should know that gratitude and I have been around the block.

In my book, I tell the story of creating a gratitude list and how it literally changed my life. I write…

“I’d been listening to Oprah go on and on about gratitude for decades, so I figured that if I was going to focus on what was currently working, I’d start with that. It seemed simple enough, so every day for a year or so, I wrote out everything I was grateful for in the Tumblr blog I’d created, and posted photos to represent it.

Looking back, it’s kind of painful to read it, but I have a lot of compassion for that girl declaring her gratitude for pumpkin spice lattes. Instead of hating the fact that I lived in a tiny studio apartment and loathing my current reality, gratitude enabled me to focus on what was going right – even if it was the coffee I was able to buy and enjoy that day.”

Now the thing about that list I was making, was that it was pretty basic. It was just the start. And it was gratitude for things that had already happened. Clearly, that’s powerful work; it helped me shift my negative mindset and get to where I am now.

But today, I want to cover a different type of gratitude: gratitude for things that haven’t happened yet and how that elevated emotion actually creates manifestations in your life.

Let me explain…

In his book, Dispenza speaks of gratitude as a magical elixir that has the power to transform your life, health, bank account, relationships — literally everything.

And in order to change your life, he recommends you focus on what you want to happen and feel the emotion of gratitude even before you create that new reality in your life.

He says, “Gratitude is a powerful emotion to use for manifesting because normally we feel gratitude after we receive something. So the emotional signature of gratitude means it has already happened.

When you are thankful or you feel appreciation, you are in the ultimate state to receive. When you embrace gratitude, your body as the unconscious mind will begin to believe it is in that future reality in the present moment.”

So he’s saying that we can use gratitude to essentially trick our mind (and body) into believing that something has already happened.

Let’s look at a specific example…

Maybe at the moment, your bank account isn’t where you want it to be. You’re ready for more wealth, and yet you’re so focused on what you don’t have, and that’s all your mind can see.

Imagine what would happen if you shifted your focus to what you want instead? And coupled that desire with the elevated feeling of gratitude?

I’m sure you can imagine how that would feel to already have the money in your bank account. You can even try it for a second right now…

Envision being able to buy whatever you want at your favorite clothing store. Booking the first-class ticket to Italy. Getting your dream house. Being able to send your kids to whatever school they want. Flying private. Hiring a full personal and professional staff so you get to live your dreams.

Really picture it, live it, feel it. (Don’t worry, I’ll wait.)

Are you starting to feel the effects of gratitude for those things? Maybe you’re feeling elated just by seeing yourself having the experience in your mind?

That’s what we’re going for. Elation. High-vibrational emotions.

Dispenza says, “Something as simple as moving into an elevated state of joy, love, inspiration, or gratitude for five to ten minutes a day can produce significant epigenetic changes in your health and body.”

(Not to mention your bank account!)

Whereas “when you wake up in the morning and immediately start putting your attention and energy on all the people you have to see that day, the places you have to go, the objects you own, and the things you have to do in the three-dimensional world, your energy becomes fractured. All of your creative energy is flowing away from you”.

And it’s even more important than maintaining all of your creative energy; gratitude (and other elevated emotions) has positive effects on our body as it causes the heart to beat in coherent rhythms.

And the heart’s rhythm has consequences for our overall health.

Dispenza explains that “If the heart beats in harmonious rhythms, its efficiency reduces stress on other systems of the body, maximizes our energy…”

So gratitude can literally save your life.

It makes total sense when you think about it.

We all know of the negative effects of chronic stress. Imagine what would happen in your life (and to your body) if you maintained chronic gratitude instead?

And of course, this is about so much more than just us!

As Dispenza says, “Every time we change our state of being and begin our day by opening our hearts to the elevated states that connect us to a love for life, a joy for existence, the inspiration to be alive, a state of gratitude that our future has already happened, and a level of kindness toward others…we are no longer contributing to the world’s old consciousness.”

So today, I hope you begin to recognize the power of gratitude in every area of your life.

And that you not only write that gratitude list, but you start to focus on feeling grateful for what you want to manifest in your life and watch your world transform.

It truly is “the ultimate state of receivership”.

I’m so grateful for you and for what we’re creating together.

P.S. Interested in learning more about using your mind to create a life you love? We’ll be teaching on this in our workshop happening in Miami, Florida on December 6th.