The Power of Gratitude: The Key to a Fulfilled Life
I must admit I’m still amazed when I meet quite educated people, who know both psychology and holistic/esoteric/spiritual themes well, yet have such superficial and naive understandings of some principles, such as “law of attraction,” “affirmations,” “manifestations”…
… or “power of gratitude.”
Naive understandings start from it being enough to do nothing (i.e., be passive) or just say aloud/write/meditate, and the Universe will do all the work instead of you.
I’ll tell you something in confidence.
As someone who for more than a decade has been studying human (personal and business) development from both scientific/psychological and esoteric/spiritual sides, I’m truly convinced there are “forces” that constantly do “something” for human welfare. Ancient sages, priests, zen monks, shamans, magicians spoke about this… Tesla and Einstein, Napoleon Hill spoke about these “forces”… and scientists today in their own way confirm there are some “things” that (still) can’t be purely scientifically explained, but somehow work for human welfare.
When it comes to “power of gratitude,” I can confirm with certainty it works and has benefits for humans. I can prove that to you, regardless of whether you’re of pragmatic/logical or esoteric/spiritual nature. Somehow, after quite a bit of effort and time, I managed to (partially) see it from both sides.
But first you need to understand what “power of gratitude” (and “gratitude” in general) is and how to approach it.
When people struggle with gratitude (whichever above-mentioned personality type they belong to), I often suggest they look at “power of gratitude” as an “(auxiliary) tool.” The better you understand what some tool serves, what all functions it has and (most importantly) how it all can be used, it’ll be of greater and greater use to you and you’ll enjoy the fruits of its use more and more.
That’s why “power of gratitude” for some “doesn’t work,” for some is “meh,” and for some “works wonders.”
The book “The Power of Gratitude: The Key to a Fulfilled Life” is the fruit of the work of two authors, Noelle Nelson and Jeannine Lemare Calaba. What’s definitely interesting is these two ladies aren’t some spiritual gurus, shamans, coaches and such… but psychologists. One is (also a court expert) who used meditation and visualization in her work with clients, and the other is a researcher of “biofeedback,” neurotherapy, QEEG… in translation, quite an interesting and unusual duo, who decided to write a book about the benefits of “power of gratitude” after their interesting discovery of how brain waves quite significantly “change” when a person feels strong gratitude.
[Image placeholders]
The book is divided into 12 chapters (and two appendices):
- The Transformative Nature of Gratitude
- The Energy of Gratitude
- Becoming a Grateful Person
- Change Situations and Summon Desired Outcomes with Gratitude
- How to Change or Attract What You Want with Gratitude in Five Steps
- Perfect the Path to Good Relationships
- Perfect the Path to Profitable and Fulfilling Work
- Your Children and Gratitude
- Perfect the Path to Health and Healing
- Perfect the Path to Beautiful Aging
- Overcome Crises with Gratitude
- The Significance of Gratitude for the Future
As you see, the book covers in what all areas (and how) you can apply gratitude for your good, both on health, love, career or financial plans, and even when you’re in a major crisis.
If I tried to summarize, I could say that activating the force called “power of gratitude” is a five-step path:
- Think about what you’d like to change or summon
- What feelings stand behind your desire
- Eject thoughts and attitudes contrary to your desire
- Start gratitude vibrations
- Engage gratitude
As you see from the description, these aren’t exactly some simple “straightforward” steps for “power of gratitude.” The authors made an effort to thoroughly explain each of these steps to us and how they must be adapted to different needs (love, health, money, crises and other).
Often through the book you’ll encounter a “tabular” display of examples of a person’s current wrong attitude toward some situation (on the left side) and the attitude/way of thinking the person should have in the given situation (right side). What’s commendable is normal, sensible positive attitudes are given, not some attitudes that tend to seem illusory to people. For example, you have a weight problem. Your negative attitude is “It’s not worth dieting.” Your answer to this challenge isn’t some illusory unrealistic like “I don’t have a weight problem and I’m great and everything’s okay,” but as an example from the book is given “Dieting works for some people; some other approach works for other people. I’ll find a way to reduce weight.” In translation, the authors give neutrally encouraging answers, which encourage you to think and take action combined with gratitude, not “empty self-praise/self-pity” to calm your Ego.
Where the book “Power of Gratitude” could “buy” you already at the beginning is in the introductory part where photographs of research are shown that show what wise people knew already for centuries and centuries back, when they said “all a person needs is to harmonize their heart and mind to work together, and then everything is possible.” This can literally be seen in the example of recording of heartbeats and recording of brain wave activity and it’s really interesting to see how in a person who feels strong (and SINCERE) gratitude, synchronization of heart and brain activities occurs. And when you see what your heart activities look like in a state of anger, or how (weak) your brain blood flow is then, maybe you’ll change your attitude toward your body and psyche, and generally toward yourself.
In principle, I promised myself that whenever I do reviews of books encompassing (for many quite) abstract topics like “power of gratitude,” “law of attraction,” “affirmations,” “spirituality” or related to esotericism/spirituality, I’ll try, whenever I can, not to enter into much deeper analyzing of such books, because there’s a risk that individual readers (especially those not familiar with that theme or already have a built negative attitude toward it) will incorrectly interpret some things. I’m as familiar with these topics as with those addressing more “rational aspects of life” (psychology, psychotherapy, coaching, business development, HR and other), and I think I’ve come to some “level” that I could approach these topics from “both sides” (both scientific and spiritual/holistic). That’s why I’ll always try to summarize in the review whether such books also have some practically applicable things that would be useful to readers. And hand on heart, detailed explaining and analyzing of these concepts would extend the review by at least another 15 pages. 😀
From some of my experience, it seems to me people still don’t understand that behind expressing gratitude there must exist sincere and strong intention, and that it’s not enough to just “emptily” say you’re grateful for something. You must, after all, watch both how you say something, to yourself and others (Abracadabra), as well as what emotions you truly feel while saying it. It’s not some empty mantra for before sleep, it’s proactive energy. And it’s not said without reason that the most optimistic people in the world are precisely those who find the most reasons to be grateful from the heart (for something).
When it comes to the book “Power of Gratitude,” I think it’s worth reading and can give quite nice insights into gratitude’s purpose and its (especially health) benefits, whether you believe in gratitude as some “energetic” concept or not. The book has only 170 pages, reads quickly, and no special prior knowledge is needed about what “power of gratitude” is and how it works. Everything is simply explained in the book.
So it won’t hurt if you read it. 🙂
And you, dear reader, what can you be grateful for today? 🙂
Author’s website
Book price: Harmonija | Vulkan | Delfi
Ratings (and purchase) on foreign sites: Goodreads | Amazon | Bookdepository | Simon & Schuster | Waterstones
