Why Gratitude is Powerful
- Shelley Owens Schaal
- Jun 23
- 3 min read
You've probably heard about gratitude as a practice to help you feel more positive about your life. People have been talking about it for a number of years as something that can help you shift your perspective. What's so powerful about gratitude for me is that it also shifts your vibration.
We create our experience through our thoughts, which determine the frequency of the vibration of our energetic body. Thoughts of gratitude raise our vibration immediately, which has a positive impact on what we are able to create and attract into our life. Being grateful means to focus our appreciation on those things that bring us satisfaction and positively contribute to our life. Taking this perspective allows us to align our vibration with these things, which attracts more of those same things into our experience.
For me, this practice is most powerful when I am feeling especially anxious, stressed, or experiencing challenges in my life. When I first tried the practice of gratitude, I really struggled. I looked for things in my experience to appreciate and could only see what was wrong. I started by trying to find 5 things to be grateful for, like my family, or my job, all material things related to success. Then I learned to shift my focus to more basic and fundamental things that were more stable, like a breath of air in my lungs or even just clean air, and my 5 senses because they brought beauty into my life.
This new focus made it so much easier to come up with 5 things. Then as my thoughts shifted, I began seeing more things I could include like my gifts and talents, or access to the internet that gives me access to more information than any library ever could. I began to look for things that I took for granted and that added value to my experience. I was raised to give thanks at every meal for the food we had, and encouraged to clean my plate because there were children starving in some countries. We were always reminded of our good fortune when we complained about not getting those new clothes, or that latest toy. I think about the way I was raised to show gratitude and it makes it easier to go back to that way of thinking.
Now, I can find so many things to appreciate and it has changed my overall perspective. It is easy to see the positive side of every situation because I've trained my thoughts to search them out. This perspective also brings so much more abundance into my life because I'm attracting more and more of what I appreciate. Not only do I feel happier and more content with my life, but I also feel the appreciation at a much deeper level. It feels much deeper than just a thank you because I know what I have suffered at the hands of my own destructive thoughts and I'm able to feel the relief and the power of my ability to choose thoughts that give me the life I desire. When I choose gratitude, I choose to focus on positive thoughts that in turn, create a positive experience. It's all within my power of choice, which is incredibly liberating!
Try It Out
If you are interested in trying out the practice of gratitude, I've recorded a meditation as a guide to help you get started.
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