start monday with gratitude

Focus on something that makes you feel afraid.

Spend some time feeling into the emotion of fear, how it feels in your body, and how your body responds to fear.

Do you feel your body constrict in any way? Does your energy feel heavy and dense? Notice exactly how you’re feeling when you’re fully tuned into the emotion of fear.

After you’ve spent some time experiencing fear, change your emotion to that of joy and elation.

Can you do that easily? Can you immediately swap to this new emotion and feeling? Or do you keep holding onto the old emotion, the emotion of fear, not being able to fully let go?

The jump from fear to joy and elation is simply too big a jump to make and hold onto for any length of time. The gap between the emotions is simply too wide to be able to traverse it easily, efficiently, and effectively.

Focus on something that makes you angry or something that has recently made you angry.

Similar to yesterday’s exercise, spend some time really getting into the emotion of anger, how it feels in your body and mind, how your body and mind react to the emotion of anger.

After you’ve spent some time experiencing anger, go about the rest of your day. Don’t try to change how you feel or the emotion you feel. Just go about your day.

However, every couple of hours (or so) check back in with how you feel. See what emotion you’re experiencing each time you check in with yourself.

Do you manage to raise your vibration to that of a higher emotion or do you stay in the emotion of anger throughout the day? Do you, perhaps, chop and change, go up and down the ladder of emotions, sometimes feeling a happy emotion and then falling back down to a low emotion? If you do, which type of emotions do you tend to stay in the most, lower negative ones or higher positive ones?

More likely than not, your energy and emotion will hang around anger, the emotion you started the day off because you’ve just gone about your day making no conscious attempt to change your emotion.

Repeat yesterday’s exercise, only this time, as you go about your day and check in with yourself every couple of hours, after you identify the emotion you’re experiencing at the time of your check-in, spend about 10 minutes consciously thinking about something that makes you really happy, something you love, something that makes you smile and laugh.

Does your emotion change and rise throughout the day as you check in on it? If it does, does it rise a lot or just gradually?

Because you’ve consciously focused on a high vibrational emotion, such as joy or happiness, when you do your check ins every couple of hours, you should notice that your overall mood gradually begins to increase and rise.

It won’t suddenly change because you’re only spend a few minutes every couple of hours, focused on changing your mood and emotion, but it should rise.

We’re going to repeat the same exercise you’ve been doing all week. Note: you’ll need a little more time for today’s exercise.

Focus on something that makes you angry or something that has recently made you angry. Spend some time really getting into the emotion of anger, how it feels in your body and mind, how your body and mind react to the emotion of anger.

After you’ve spent some time experiencing anger, spend a few minutes focusing on something you did that took courage and how that made you feel. Again, spend some time focusing on the emotion and feeling of courage until you can feel it in your body.

Next focus on something that you were invited to do that you wanted to do, something for which you experienced the feeling of willingness. Feel into that emotion and feeling and how it feels in your body, how your body reacts to it.

Is your body starting to feel a bit less constricted? Is the emotion starting to feel a little bit lighter and less dense?

After you’ve fully experienced the feeling of willingness, move to focusing on love. Think of someone you love so dearly, someone who makes you smile and laugh, someone you look forward to spending time with. Again, spend some time feeling into love and how it feels in your body and how your body reacts to the emotion of love.

Once you’ve fully experienced the feeling and emotion of love, go about your day.

Every couple of hours (or so) check back in with how you feel. See what emotion you’re experiencing each time you check in with yourself.

Do you manage to keep your vibration high, in an emotion emotion more closely linked to love than anger throughout the day? Do you, perhaps, go up and down the ladder of emotions, sometimes feeling a positive emotion and then falling back down to a low emotion? If you do, which type of emotions do you tend to stay in the most, lower negative ones or higher positive ones?

More likely than not, your energy and emotion will hang around that of love, not anger. Even though you started the day focused on anger, you took time to consciously work your way up the emotional ladder until you experienced love. And only when you were in an emotion of love did you formally start your day.

Because you consciously moved up to love, you’ll have found it easier to stay in the vibration. Even if someone annoyed you during the day, there’s a higher likelihood that you would have returned to a higher vibration after a little while.

Repeat what we’ve been doing the previous days and start your day by focusing on something that makes or made you angry.

Really feel into that emotion until you know that is the dominant emotion in your body. Spend some time getting reacquainted with the emotion of anger, how it feels in your body and how your body reacts to it.

Then go about your day. However, constantly throughout your day, I invite you to find things that you can express gratitude for.

When you find your first thing to be grateful for, you may struggle a little to express that gratitude because, after all, you’re in an angry mood. But take the time to express gratitude and notice what instantly happens your mood, your emotions, your body as a result. Not only do they rise and improve, but it happens quickly, right? Where before you had to slowly work your way up the scale of emotions, gratitude gives you a shortcut and jumpstart.

Now that you’ve expressed your first gratitude for the day, it should be easier to continue expressing gratitude for everything that happens to you throughout the day, both the positive and the not-so-positive.

Indeed, when something not-so-positive happens, and your emotion falls, how quickly can expressing gratitude raise that emotion and, also, does the emotion even get a chance to fall very far?

At the end the day check in with yourself and your dominant emotion. Is it one of anger or one of gratitude?

Because you’ve been expressing gratitude all day, throughout the day, it will have been impossible for you to return to the emotion of anger for any length of time. If you did, it would have been a very short and instant blip which you corrected by instantly expressing gratitude.

Let’s lean into some positive emotions today.

First, I invite you to lean into the emotion of happiness. Can you feel happiness in your body? Do you have to do anything to feel happy or can you just feel happy?

What about excitement. How does excitement feel in your body? Again, do you have to do anything to feel excitement, do you have to take any actions to strengthen the feeling of excitement, or can you just feel it?

And what about hope? Feel and experience hope in your body. Do you have to do anything, do you have to take any kind of action to experience hope, or can you simply experience it in your body by focusing on the emotion of hope? Is there anything you can do to make the feeling of hope stronger such as saying out loud “I am hopeful”?

Let’s now consider gratitude. Can you feel gratitude in your body? How does gratitude feel in your body? Is there anything you feel drawn to do when you feel gratitude? Is there any action you wish to take to bolster and strengthen that feeling of gratitude? Think of something or someone you feel gratitude towards and express the gratitude out loud or in your head. Does that increase your feeling of gratitude even further?

Whilst gratitude is a positive emotion and feeling like any other positive emotion or feeling, to take it to the next level, to really bolster and strengthen the impact of gratitude, it requires action too.

And the action associated with gratitude is expression, expressing your gratitude and creating a practice of gratitude so you can hone an attitude to gratitude.

When we experience the true power and strength of gratitude, it urges us to express it rather than simply keeping the feeling inside. Almost like holding our breath, at some stage we need to exhale and release.

By this stage, with so many weeks practising gratitude, you know what true gratitude feels like.

So today, I invite you to consciously witness what happens to you when you experience true gratitude.

Throughout the day find things to be grateful for; both small and large.

When you come across something you feel gratitude towards, try to slow everything down, try to watch, witness and experience every stage of gratitude.

Feel your vibration rise, feel your heart swell, feel warmth and happiness rise in your body.

And then pause.

How does that feel? It feels good right?

But after a while, when we truly experience gratitude, there’s a desire to take another, final step.

And that step is an action step, to express our gratitude, whether it is directly to a person, out loud about a thing, or quietly in our head.

That’s where gratitude stands apart from all other positive emotions. It creates the desire to take action. Otherwise, whilst you may feel good when you first experience gratitude, if you don’t take that final step, things can begin to feel a bit tight, like holding your breath.