start monday with gratitude

Go back into your younger years to a time where you felt let down or hurt by someone, when, perhaps, they didn’t do what you wanted them to do.

Have you got that memory? Just go with the first thing that pops into your head.

Now, move forward a little in time and see if you can find something positive that resulted from that experience.

Can you think of something positive or are you struggling to find anything positive?

If the former, give thanks and gratitude for that experience and the positive result that arose from it.

If the latter, give thanks and gratitude for that experience and the positive result that would have arisen from it, even though you cannot yet uncover it.

I invite you, again, to go back to a time where you felt let down by the Universe.

To a time when you might have thought (or said), “how could life be so cruel to me?” or “why do things never work out for me like they do everyone else?” or “why does life have to be so challenging for me all of the time?”

Have you got that memory? Go with whatever pops into your head but make sure it’s a different memory from the one you experienced yesterday.

Spend some time remembering that memory in as great a detail as possible.

Remember what happened, remember how you felt and try to re-experience how you felt.

When you’ve spent a few minutes re-experiencing that memory, I want you to simply say “thank you for this experience”.

How did you feel when you said, ‘thank you’?

Did you mean it?

Did it feel wrong to say it?

Did you resent having to say it?

We’re going to build on what we did yesterday.

Go back to the experience you remembered yesterday. Bring it back into the forefront of your mind. Recall what it was about and what happened to make you think (or say), something along the lines of “how could life be so cruel to me?” or “why do things never work out for me like they do everyone else?” or “why does life have to be so challenging for me all of the time?”

Now I invite you to move forward in time and find a positive that resulted from this experience.

What positive thing arose from this experience where you felt that life wasn’t supporting you, that the Universe didn’t have your back and chose to let you fall?

Something positive arises out of everything, not just the good experiences but also the challenging ones.

So, I encourage you to spend time searching for the good that arose from this experience.

I don’t want you to just assume something good arose, like you may have done in Monday’s exercise, I want you to find the good. Search for it, uncover it, find it.

And when you have, express your gratitude for that good.

Today I invite you to remember a surprising opportunity that came into your life or a result that you didn’t expect.

Often the surprises in life and the unexpected results arise out of something that went wrong or where we may have been sent down a path different to what we had planned or hoped.

When you have that surprising opportunity or unexpected result in your mind, try to trace it back to its origin to see if you can find the very source that kick-started the chain of events.

Can you uncover a moment when things seemed to go horribly wrong, or you felt life was against you?

What you planned and how your saw the path forward to be was suddenly turned upside down and you thought “why me?”?

Give thanks and gratitude for that moment when things went horribly wrong or pushed you onto a different path. If that hadn’t had happened, you wouldn’t have enjoyed the surprising opportunity or the unexpected result that you did.

Remember a time when a ‘spanner was thrown in the works’, when a challenge was thrown into your path and you felt that life was fighting against you.

Go back to the beginning of that experience and remember what outcome you wanted, before things went wrong. Take time to remember what outcome you had wanted from the situation before that obstacle was thrown onto your path.

Now go forward to what the final outcome was, after navigating your way around the obstacle that came on your path and changed the outcome you had wanted and expected.

Looking back and comparing what happened versus what you wanted to happen, how much better was the actual outcome than the one you had originally in mind?

Can you see that life wasn’t fighting against you, that life had better things in store for you?

Give gratitude for life throwing that obstacle in your path and for the outcome that was better than you had hoped.

Look back to recent times, it could be last week, it could be the last couple of weeks, to a time when you said (or felt), “Why me?”

Look back to recent times, no further back in time than a couple of weeks – I want the memory of this experience to be recent.

What happened to make you feel that way or, indeed, say “Why me?”?

What happened to you that you felt was unfair or shouldn’t have happened?

Being such a recent event, you may not yet be in a position to determine the reason this happened, what good would come as a result of what happened. And that’s your challenge today.

Today, I simply invite you to express gratitude for that “why me?” experience.

Don’t try to understand the reason it happened. Just, with faith and trust in the Universe, express your gratitude for the experience.

After all the gratitude you have practised this week, can you do this, or do you still find it challenging to trust that something good will have resulted from that experience?

Challenges don’t simply happen in our past. They happen all the time.

So, think of a challenge you’re currently going through. It can be big, or it can be small.

At the moment, you can’t comprehend why this challenge has been presented to you.

If you look ahead and imagine how things will play out as a result of this challenge, how does it look?

Usually when we try to predict how things will work out as a result of a challenge, the end result never looks as bright as it would have, had things run as smoothly as we would have liked.

I now invite you to take the outcome you perceive and imagine placing it inside a balloon.

Now release the balloon and let it float up into the sky above. In doing so, you are releasing your grip on the outcome and letting the Universe, Life take over.

As you watch the balloon fly up into the sky say, “thank you for this challenge. I trust and know that the Universe has my back, and a better outcome will arise as a result.”