The Power of Gratitude

Photo by Brett Jordan: https://www.pexels.com/photo/wooden-letter-tiles-on-white-surface-7568134/

As a long-time fan of Anthony Robbins, his phrase “live with an attitude of gratitude” has been rattling around in my head for a long time (I think I first read Unlimited Power when I was about 15, so that’s in the neighborhood of around 40 years).

Even so, with pandemics, political strife, and other turmoil in the world, my attention on gratitude has been lacking in recent years. For whatever reason, the topic of gratitude started showing up recently in my YouTube feed (in particular, ones by Tony Robbins and Dr. Joe Dispenza) and I started watching some of those videos and making a practice of taking time to really think about (and feel) what I’m grateful for.

I have to say, with just a few days of making a point to take stock of the things on my “gratitude list”, I feel a lot better. Yeah, the bad stuff is still out there in the world, but there’s plenty of good stuff in my life, and I suspect most people’s lives, to at least partially offset the bad.

There’s weirdness in the economy and it’s put a hit on my personal finances, but I am grateful that I have a roof over my head and plenty to eat.

I may have some patients who are “challenging” (You know who you are, Humpfrey! No, not you, Humpfrey – a different Humpfrey!), but I have gratitude that I enjoy working with the vast majority of them.

My two sisters don’t get along and it’s sad to see how bad their relationship has become, but I’m grateful to be on good terms with both of them myself.

I hate that politics has made people so polarized, angry, and fearful, but I’m thankful to live in a country where we can openly express our views and where, when the chips are really down (such as a natural disaster) at least a good number of those people with diverse (even violently diverse) points of view will still come together to help each other out.

I’ve found that by focusing on the things I have gratitude for, my overall stress levels are down, my mood is better, and I have more energy.

In addition, and I know this is going to sound pretty “woo-woo”, but there also seems to be a bit more synchronicity in my life – and I only started with my gratitude practice a few days ago. I think in terms of positive thought leads to positive action, leads to positive outcomes, so I kind of take the more metaphysical talk of “manifesting” per Dr. Joe Dispenza’s videos with a grain of salt. It may just be a coincidence, but things just seem to be coming together better since I started focusing on gratitude.

But even if it is just a coincidence and I’m not magically manifesting anything, the more positive outlook I have from making a point to practice gratitude is in itself quite powerful and beneficial.

There are various ways to go about it, but I’ve taken a pretty simple approach.

First thing every morning, I get up and go for a walk. These past few days, while I walk, rather than think about my problems, or even relatively “positive” things like what I want to accomplish that day, I’ve just made a mental list of things I’m grateful for. Some of it’s pretty basic, like gratitude for having a roof over my head, food to eat, etc.. Some of it is about people in my life. A little bit is gratitude for things I project happening in the future.

It’s all pretty stream of consciousness with no particular order to it.

In addition, I’ve tried to be vigilant about my negative thoughts and when I become aware of them, I ask myself what about that thing, situation, person, etc. that’s bothering me is something I can be grateful for.

For example, if I know Humpfrey (no, Humpfrey, again, I’m not talking about YOU!) is coming in that day and he’s hard to work on, he complains about everything, he’s never fully satisfied with anything I do for him, he complains I charge too much, etc., I can be grateful that most of my patients are not like Humpfrey – and I can truly feel gratitude thinking about them instead!

I’m making light of it, but that’s basically what I’ve doing with my negativity – trying to reframe it into gratitude.

Anyway, I suggest you give this gratitude thing a try. If you want more recommendations about what to do, I encourage you to check out Tony Robbins’ and Joe Dispenza’s videos on YouTube.

Joe makes it sound like you’ll have a million dollars delivered to you personally by Jesus riding a unicorn within 30 days if you use gratitude and some of his other manifesting methods, but although it’s possible you might fall a little short of that (like maybe half a million delivered by a man named Jesse riding a horse with a fake horn duct-taped to its head), I think it’s still worth a try!

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.