Gratitude and Prosperity

One of the quickest and easiest ways to create a more prosperous life is to start focusing more on gratitude.

How can such a simple technique create such impressive change? If you consider that we classify most of our experiences based on our perspective, you can see the power of choosing our focus wisely. Let’s look at a simple example of the power of perspective:

Imagine a man that has no money; not even a few dollars to buy a meal. Suddenly a stranger appears and hands him $20. How would he react to receiving $20? He’d probably be overcome with joy and gratitude!

Now imagine a man that has $200, but needs $1000 more to pay his rent by tomorrow. What would his reaction be to receiving $20 from a stranger? He’d probably be appreciative, but still mostly focused on what he DOESN’T have - $980 still needed to pay his rent.

This isn’t about the sum of money involved, but the FOCUS chosen in each example. You may think that a simple focus on gratitude can do nothing more than help you feel better about your life, but it goes much deeper than that.

Here are three powerful ways that an attitude of gratitude can change your life and increase your prosperity:

1) What you focus on expands.

The more you make an effort to see the benefits in each situation, the more benefits you will notice. Not only do you recognize more of the good stuff, you’ll actually begin to attract it. Like attracts like! The more grateful you are for what you have the more stuff you will attract to be grateful about. The more positive you are the more positive people you will attract. The more prosperous you think, the more prosperity you will attract. On and on it goes, for every possible quality or experience you want to receive.

2) You’ll be more receptive to opportunities.

In order to recognize and take advantage of opportunities, you need to be open to them! If you’re busy brooding about how awful your life is, you will be preoccupied and miss out on any opportunities that come your way. Either that or you’ll be so cynical that even if you see an opportunity, you won’t act on it. A genuine focus on gratitude keeps you feeling happy and alert, so you’ll be more likely to see and grasp the opportunities you encounter.

3) You’ll feel better about your current circumstances.

Finally, gratitude can indeed make your existing circumstances seem better, even before anything has changed. Not only do you take time to appreciate the good things in your life, you also begin to feel hopeful and optimistic about the future. You begin to recognize the good parts of even troublesome situations, which can reveal solutions or at least help you develop a calm acceptance for anything out of your control.

Adopting a gratitude focus may not be a magic solution to all of your problems, but it can help you embrace a more peaceful, satisfied state of mind. And isn’t that what prosperity is all about?