The Key ingredient to your success (maybe not the one you are expecting…)

This post was originally featured on the EverydayPower blog in October 2015

When I get asked what “the secret of my success” is, or why things are working so well, or how I went from selling 30 books a month to 1000 books a month, I usually answer that the main reason for great things happening in my life right now is probably the “Power of Gratitude” meaning he constant state of gratitude I’m in.

Grateful for good things that happen every day and even for good things that are on the way to me, but not in my life yet.

Grateful for every experience, grateful to be alive and healthy. There are so many reasons to be grateful for! Unfortunately many of us forget about them, because we are so busy doing other things all the time.

The Key ingredient to your success

Listen to Oprah Winfrey when she says: “Be grateful for what you have every day and you will attract more things to be grateful for.”

Here are some of the many benefits of the “Attitude of Gratitude”:

It recharges you with energy
It boosts your self-worth.
It’s directly linked to physical and mental well-being.
It leads you directly to happiness
It’s the best antidote to anger, envy, and resentment!

Let it become part of your nature! Be grateful for what you have, for all the small things around you, and even for the things you don’t have yet!

Don’t say, “I’ll be grateful when…” like I did for many years. Take the shortcut: Be grateful NOW – no matter what – and make gratitude a daily habit:

Start the day by saying thank you for what you have (instead of complaining about what you don’t have). This will have an immediate effect on your life. Focus on the good things that you can find every day.

I suggest to all my coaching clients that they write down at least 3 things they are grateful for each day; it’s even better if they do it both in the morning and again in the evening.

Also start a gratitude list where you write down everything you are grateful for in your life. (That should be a long list!)

It’s scientifically proven that if you are grateful for just five minutes a day, after three weeks you feel considerably happier! You just have to DO it consistently without fail, and that’s what most people don’t manage. Many times when we don’t see immediate results we give up. Well… DON’T!

A while ago I had somebody telling me: this stuff doesn’t work!! And I thought, “This can’t be!”

If you do it over two or three weeks this stuff always works. So, I looked closely and found out that there are actually three exceptions.

The power of gratitude won’t work for you if:

You don’t FEEL the gratitude! You just repeat things that you think you ‘should’ be grateful for, but you don’t really feel that feeling of gratitude resonating inside you.
You come from a place of lack: “At least I have this, at least I have that…” NOOOOO!! When you’re focusing on lack what happens? You attract MORE lack!
You are so stuck in your hectic work days and routines or – even worse – with a negative mindset that you think it’s just impossible to come up with something you are grateful for.

Is this you?

Stress, fear, doubt and worry control your life and you can’t for even a moment calm your mind and think of anything that you could be grateful for.
You try to be grateful, but all that you can think of is everything you don’t have and all the things that are going wrong. (Be careful what you focus on…you’ll get more of it…)
As soon as you try to come up with something you could be grateful for, the voice in your head goes, “You have NOTHING to be grateful for! Life is just a big, continuous struggle.”
You think, “Today is not a great day for that gratefulness thing. Maybe tomorrow something great will happen for which I can be really grateful. I’ll start tomorrow.”
It seems that this whole law of attraction nonsense doesn’t work with you, because you keep on attracting what you don’t want instead of what you do want.

So what do you do?

Here are some techniques to find things to be grateful for even if you think you have nothing to be grateful for:

Ask yourself: “If I had something to FEEL grateful for, what would it be?”

#2:

Look back at your life and think of things you can be grateful for – even though they are not a part of your daily life anymore. Often we forget to be grateful when things changed for the better. You can be grateful for that now.

#3:

Think of a time in the past when things weren’t going so well, but eventually everything turned out fine. Wouldn’t you have been immensely grateful for that back then? It’s never too late to show gratitude.

#4:

If a friend asked you, “What should I be grateful for?” what answer would you give them?

Still can’t come up with anything to be grateful for? Try some (actually all) of these things you could be grateful for:

you
being alive
three meals a day
being healthy
your body
your friends and family
your talents
your achievements
the place you live in
nature
business partners
random acts of kindness
painful lessons that you overcame
most of all, you could be grateful for the power of hope!

No matter how big a rut you are in at this moment, there is hope that tomorrow could be different – provided your tomorrow isn’t an excuse, but an earnest desire to begin!

Tomorrow you can change your life, lose that weight, get your dream job, start your own business, repay the loans, find your soul mate, go to your dream destination, and if that doesn’t warrant a need for being grateful, then I don’t know what does!

There is a lot to be grateful for. Look within and you’ll undoubtedly find a long list.

Action Steps:

1) Make a list of everything you have in your life that you are grateful for. Write down everything you can think of. (This should be a long list!)

2) For 21 days every day write 3 to 5 things that you are grateful for that day in your journal. Before going to sleep, relive the moments. Relive the happiness. It’s important to FEEL the happiness and the state of gratitude. If you do the exercise in the morning just after waking up and at night before going to sleep, it will be even more powerful!