Imagine that you have twin girls who are identical in every way except for this – one of them always says ‘thank you’, gives you big hugs and shows her appreciation for you as a parent and the other takes everything you do for her or give her for granted and treats you with a total lack of appreciation.  Do you think you would end up treating one of them differently to the other?  Would the appreciative twin be more likely to receive more love and positive attention from you (as well as some extra treats etc)?

It took me quite a long time to work it out but the Universe really does love gratitude and appreciation as much as we humans do.  If we are constantly moaning and groaning and taking everything that we already have for granted, then we tend to receive more things, people and situations to moan and groan about.  Whereas, if we adopt an attitude of gratitude for all that is and all that we have, then it appears that we are more likely to attract in more wonderful surprises.

I made it one of my daily practices several years ago to write a Gratitude Journal.  To begin with I remember finding it very hard to find 5 or 10 things to write down every night because I was still stuck in a place of challenge and ‘heaviness’.  Within hardly any time at all, I began to notice how great it felt to take just 15 minutes at the end of a long day to focus my mind on the day that had just passed and to remember the nice things, big and small, that had happened to me.  I realised that I was normally in such a rush to move on to the next part of my day that I didn’t really take time to appreciate it when someone made me a cup of tea, when I could afford to fill my car up with petrol, when my daughter gave me a hug, when the sun shone on my skin.  Gradually, these simple things started to become much more important to me and my focus was drawn to them and away from all the doom and gloom that had filled my thoughts previously.