Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude – ‘be grateful’, ‘express gratitude’, ‘write down your gratitude’…We hear about it, we’re told to do it, and we read about it – but I’ve come to believe many of us don’t fully understand how to use gratitude as a tool to manifest, nor do we fully understand why so many experts are stressing the importance of having gratitude in our daily lives.
Yes–gratitude is about reflecting on the things we have in our life and acknowledging our appreciation. However, simply listing what you’re grateful for is not enough. Gratitude is not a list of words – it’s an emotion – a deep sense of appreciation that moves you to your core. We need to feel it deep within simply because words don’t shift our energy, feelings do. When you feel gratitude, it changes your state of being and affects your thoughts, behavior and your experiences.
The way that we manifest more of what we want into our lives is by energetically vibrating on a higher level. Imagine a building with three levels. The basement is dark and depressing and filled with people who are negative, angry and egotistical. They are complaining about how unfair life is and all the terrible things that always happen to them. They are blaming others for their bad luck and they are pissed at how unfair it is that other people are happy. They are stuck and it feels heavy and draining for you to be here. For the sake of this analogy, let’s call the basement a low vibrational energy.
The ground floor is neutral in appearance and in the emotions it evokes in you. The environment and the people here are fine but they don’t inspire you in any way. This is a neutral vibrational energy. It’s neither good nor bad – it leaves your energetic state unchanged.
The top floor blows your mind. It feels light and bright. You feel free. You are automatically drawn to the people on this floor because their energy is magnetic and you feel seen and understood. There is no judgement. You’re in awe of their positive energy and the love they have for each other. They attract all kinds of abundance into their lives and lift the spirits of those around them, including yours. You feel alive, you feel inspired and you feel like you’ve come home. This is where you belong. This floor is a high vibrational energy.
How do we bypass the basement and ground floor and ensure that we live on the top floor? This is the tricky part. The only way you can enter the top floor is by having your own personal vibrational energy level match the level of the top floor. Low vibration attracts low vibration and high vibration attracts high vibrations. This is the law of attraction. We have to take personal responsibility to raise our own vibrational level so that we can ensure we get the key to the top floor where we are surrounded by the people and experiences that not only light us up but lifts us even more to a place where we are operating at our highest potential and are surrounded by joy, ease and love.
If we choose to be a victim when things become hard (which is easy to do) then we will join the party in the basement because blame is the fastest way to drop your energetic vibration. This doesn’t mean that we cannot have a wee pity party when life gets hard. We can cry, be angry, wallow and feel sorry for ourselves – for a bit, but if we want to feel our personal power and raise our vibration, we need to dig deep and use the tools that drag us away from being a victim and push us toward being a warrior. This is where true empowerment sits and the fastest tool to raise your vibration is gratitude – not the words, but the deep feeling of appreciation for what you do have in your life.
Instead of making a typical gratitude list consisting of general things to be thankful for (e.g. my family, my home, my friends), make it more specific and expand on one particular thing at a time. Instead of writing, “my friends”, choose a specific friend and write down exactly why you’re grateful for them. And feel the gratitude to your very core to the point that it brings you pure joy. Take it one step further and send them a text sharing why you love them so much. That way, you not only raise your own vibration, but you will lift their’s also – and that’s what the Dragonfly Movement is all about!
Is it always easy to “feel” grateful on those hard days when your inner critic is taking center stage? No, it’s hard – damn hard! But when we do hard things, we grow stronger and wiser and stronger and wiser yet again. Big mental and emotional growth that strengthens your empowerment muscle doesn’t come from everything in life feeling easy. We develop our personal power when we choose to do the work when things are the hardest. When we choose to pick ourselves up off the floor and do even the smallest thing that we know helps brighten our light just a little – like practicing gratitude.
Make it a habit. Start small – one thing a day, one paragraph, one small shift in how you feel. You are training your vibration into that upward place. It will get easier, I promise. The universe rewards the brave – that’s one thing I know for sure.
I’m truly grateful to be doing this work and helping women and girls believe in their ability to create their own experiences. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.
