start monday with gratitude

week 10

Welcome to Week 10, lovely soul.

Below you'll find the video and video transcript introducing you to this week's quote and musings.

Scroll further and you'll discover this week's daily exercises, high vibe tune, and downloadable wallpapers.

The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see

Mary Davis

video transcript

When you express gratitude, what do you say?

Do you say things like "I'm so grateful for the softness of my bed and how it envelopes my body so I get a good night's sleep" or "Thank you birds for singing so sweetly every morning and making me smile" or "I'm grateful for this beautiful and delicious meal"?

When we express gratitude, we mostly, if not always, do so for the beautiful things in our life.

We don’t normally express gratitude for anything negative or anything that pulls us down. We are grateful for the things that bring us happiness, that make us smile; the things we’d happily receive more of in our life.

By expressing gratitude, our focus and energy tend to be directed towards the positive and beautiful things in our life. And as our focus and energy is directed there, so we see and experience more positive and beautiful things in our life.

It’s like a snowball effect: the more grateful you become, the more beautiful things, the more positive experiences will cross your path for you to see and enjoy.

And it is also not like a snowball effect, because the more grateful you become, the more your perspective and view on things that cross your path, changes.

Whilst gratefulness and gratitude will attract more for you to be grateful for thus causing a snowball effect, it doesn’t mean that negative experiences no longer come your way. It doesn’t mean there will be no more bumps in the road.

However, as you train yourself to see beauty in everything, you’ll start to find beauty and positivity in negative experiences where once you would have just seen and experienced pain and challenges, thus adding more beauty into your life.

So, gratitude does bring more beauty into your life in two very different ways. In one way like attracts like – when you see beauty you attract more beauty. And in the other way, you change your perspective and see beauty in things that you would have previously struggled to find beauty in.

daily gratitude practice

Let’s start this week gently.

List 10 things that you are grateful for.

Take yesterday’s list of 10 things and express your gratitude for them again, only this time things like “I’m grateful for my comfortable bed”, say things like “I'm so grateful for the softness of my bed and how it envelopes my body at night”.

Really dive into why you are grateful for whatever it is you are focusing your gratitude towards, how it makes you feel, what positive difference it makes in your life.

Taking your gratitude from yesterday where you dived deeper into why you were grateful for everything you had listed on Monday; I invite you to link each of those 10 things onto another 10 things that happened or arose as a result.

For example, yesterday you might have said something like “I'm so grateful for the softness of my bed and how it envelopes my body at night”.

Today you may link your sleep in.

So, you might say something like “I am grateful for the softness of my bed, because it enables me to get a good night’s sleep, a sleep from which I waken up feeling refreshed and ready for the day.”

Can you see how expressing gratitude for one thing can link onto something else to be grateful for?

In other words, like a snowball effect, the more grateful you are, the more beauty you see.

Now take 5 of the things you listed on Monday and find something negative associated with them.

Let’s go back to our example of your comfortable bed affording you a good night’s sleep.

Let’s suppose you live in an apartment and your neighbours had to catch a very early morning flight. When they got up, they were making quite a bit of noise which, in turn, woke you up well before you alarm was due to sound. It’s never nice being wakened from sleep, is it?

So, you could see this as something negative, right?

I’m inviting you to view it more positively.

How can you turn this negative experience around into something positive and express your gratitude?

Well, in our scenario, your bed is so soft and comfortable that you receive a good night’s sleep every night. There’s no waking up during the night, there is no constant tossing and turning. And so, you waken up every morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day.

If you are wakened up earlier than usual due to noisy neighbours, your sleep account is in the black so you can afford to ‘lose’ some sleep every now and then and still waken up feeling refreshed.

Repeat Thursday’s exercise for the remaining 5 things on your list from Monday, finding something linked to each thing that could be deemed negative and turning it around into something that’s positive.

Think of something in your life, an area of your life where you have experienced negativity and struggled to gain anything positive from it.

Perhaps it’s something that happened you a while ago, such as losing something that may not have had a lot of financial value attached to it but which carried a lot of sentimental value.

Take time thinking of the situation, understanding your feelings, and then find a way to look at what happened from a positive perspective.

We can find something positive in everything, we just need to take the time to uncover it.

Think of something that is happening in your life at this present moment; something that you feel is negative.

It could be something that’s just in progress or something that dates back for a long time and is still ongoing.

A good example would be something like a health issue.

It’s easy to express why and how this has made your life more challenging, perhaps more restrictive, less enjoyable.

However, if someone were to say to you, “you’re so lucky this has happened to you", how would you reply? I invite you to start your reply with, “Yes, because….”

Can you see the good that has come from this situation?

Can you see the blessing that it has brought?

and let's not forget...

This week's high vibe tune reminds us that even the small things can change our outlook

dance to this week's high vibe tune here

have gratitude wherever you go...

... with this week's gratitude quote wallpaper.

Note: details of how to download this week's wallpaper is provided below.

“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see” ~ Mary Davis

16:9

16:10

4:3

mobile

how to download your wallpaper

Before copying one of the pictures below, you'll want to quickly check your screen settings because the worst thing you can do is use a wallpaper with an aspect ratio that differs from the aspect ratio of your screen.

The aspect ratio of a rectangle is simply the proportion between width and height. The most common are 16:9, 16:10 and 4:3. And it will be for these 3 sizes that I shall provide you with your free wallpaper.

To find your screen resolution follow this basic guide. Steps for your computer may vary slightly but I hope this will give you some guidance:

Right-click the desktop and select Display settings.
Scroll down until you see "Resolution" (you may have to choose an "Advanced" option)
To find your aspect ratio, divide the width over the height. For example, if my resolution is 1920 x 1080 then I would divide 1920 over 1080 to get 1.778, which indicates a 16:9 resolution. Similarly, 1.6 indicated 16:10 and 1.333 indicates 4:3
When you've calculated your screen's aspect ratio, go to the picture below that matches that size
Right click on the picture and select "Set as Desktop Background"
Choose whether to "Fill", "Fit", or "Stretch" your picture - if you've chosen the right size "Fit" will be your best option
Select "Set Desktop Background" and you're done

First, save the wallpaper image to your phone by pressing your finger on the wallpaper image and hold down on it until you see a menu.
From here, click the “Save image” tab, and it will begin downloading.
The next step is to set this saved image as your wallpaper by pressing and holding a blank area on your screen (meaning where no apps are placed), and home screen options will appear.
Select 'add wallpaper' and choose whether the wallpaper is intended for 'Home screen', 'Lock screen', or 'Home and lock screen'.
Another set of options will appear where you can choose where the photo you would like to use will be coming from, namely the Gallery.
If necessary, crop the image to a suitable size. Once satisfied, simply click 'Done'.

First, save the wallpaper image to your phone by pressing your finger on the wallpaper image and hold down for about 2 seconds until a menu appears.
From here, click “Save Image“, and it will begin downloading.
The next step is to set this saved image as your wallpaper by, first, going to the 'Photos' app and selecting the wallpaper photo you've saved there.
Click on the share icon on the lower left corner of the screen, then select 'Use as Wallpaper'.
Then choose to set the photo as either the lock screen, home screen or both.