Conscious Choice: The Gateway to Abundance is Gratitude

July 2000

The Gateway to Abundance is Gratitude

by Maria Nemeth

Abundance. The word has a life of its own. Thoughts of abundance can trigger visions of standing with arms outstretched as $100 bills rain down from the heavens, or jumping up and down as lottery numbers flash across the TV screen. In prosperity workshops, the word abundance glows with the promise of "more," which is always around the next bend, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. [Yet] the desire for more is most often a conversation about scarcity. It’s born of leaking and wasting money, or being driven, or thinking that amassing more stuff will substitute for having clear goals that represent our life’s intentions. It’s time to comprehend and grasp the true nature of abundance.

In order to imagine abundance, draw a circle on a clean piece of paper. Next, fill in the circle with examples of everything we experience in life: happiness and sadness, good and bad times, joy and sorrow, play and work, scarcity and plenty. You could spend the rest of your life filling in the circle, couldn’t you? Our experience of life is infinite in its variety, isn’t it?

This circle represents abundance. Abundance is everything. Every possible aspect of life’s experience. All of it, including scarcity. From this perspective, you can see that scarcity is one of the manifestations of abundance. We increase our power by embracing life’s abundance — by saying yes.

With this new understanding of abundance and prosperity, you can handle the flow of energy in your life. When you’re not blocking anything, are willing to learn from everything, and are committed to expressing your true nature, you are in that moment prospering. From this we can see that prosperity is not something out there, waiting to happen in the future. Prosperity occurs now, every time you are willing to be fully present to your life.

The Fine Art of Gratitude

One way to encounter abundance is through developing the art of gratitude. Spiritual leaders tell us that it’s important to develop gratefulness. Theologian Brother David Steindl-Rast says we have gotten what makes for a full life all backward by waiting for good circumstances to occur before we express gratitude. The key to growing into your goals is bringing gratefulness to your everyday circumstances, no matter what they may be.

How do you become grateful for everything? You may not want to be grateful for whatever is in your life. You may think it’s a bad idea to be grateful for a difficult circumstance because it will empower that circumstance. For example, you may find you owe $1,000 more on your income tax than you thought, or you may lose your job to downsizing. How do you wrap gratitude around that?

Gratitude does not mean that you jump for joy at whatever occurs in your life. Rather, it means that you note, bear witness to, and see whatever is put before you. You are willing to let it be there, doing nothing to postpone whatever lesson or opportunity comes from fortune and misfortune.

Affirmations: Awakening the Grateful Heart

One way to kindle gratitude is to practice paying attention to what’s happening in our everyday physical reality. We ordinarily spend so much time with Monkey Mind as it chatters about the past or future that we don’t linger long enough to see what is here in the present. As Hellen Mellicost puts it, when we live in the present moment, life is not hard.

The foundation of affirmation is staying in the present moment. To affirm is to literally make firm. We do this by observing what’s before us and allowing it to be there just as it is. This takes guts. We don’t always feel up to it. However, we can be willing, even with all our doubts and fears that we’re not up to the challenge.

There are three ways to engage in creative affirmation. Creative affirmation is not wishful thinking or offering incantations to the Fates. It’s the simple process of shifting the way you observe the events in your life and imbuing them with gratitude.

The first way to use affirmation is to note and welcome your daily lessons. This is sometimes difficult, because the deepest lessons don’t appear beneficial at first glance. To discover that you have lost a job seems more like a closing than an opening. It feels terrible. At the moment you experience this loss, it would be useless for anyone to tell you, "Oh, but you will learn so much from this! Be grateful!"

No, first you need to fret, complain, or get angry. Then, and only then, do you have the opportunity to say, "Yes. I am willing to experience this. I am willing for this to be a lesson for me."

The experience of first acknowledging, and then being open to a difficult lesson looks something like this:

Mark: I lost out on an organizational development consulting job.

Me: What happened?

Mark: I’m not sure. This really burns me. I thought I did a great job.

Me: Tell us about being "burned up." (I am not trying to use logic to talk him out of how he feels.)

Mark: I really wanted the job. Could have used the money, too. I feel like such a jerk. Maybe I came off really badly at the interview.

Me: Anything else that burns you up about this?

Mark: Maybe I’m not as great as I think I am. I’ve been in this business for eighteen years. Maybe I’ve just been fooling myself all along.

Me: What else burns you about this?

Mark: (Goes on for another two minutes emptying the Monkey Mind conversations out of his head. Then he pauses.)

Me: Take a deep breath. (He does.) Are you willing to have this be here? Are you willing to have this be a message or a lesson for you?

Mark: I don’t think so. I feel so stupid.

Me: I don’t mean do you want this lesson. Or even that you believe it can teach you anything. I’m asking if you’re willing. This is above and beyond what Monkey Mind is telling you right now.

Mark: Okay. Then I’m willing. Something happened that I hate. But I’m willing to have it be here. (He pauses.) I’m even willing to be grateful for the wake-up call this mess created. I’m not grateful now. But I’m willing to be.

Mark decided to call the man who had interviewed him to ask for feedback. Was there anything the man could tell him that might be helpful for future interviews? The interviewer was impressed. He told Mark the only thing disqualifying him was that he had not given enough details about his proposed program for the company. This had nothing to do with his skill or ability. Mark revamped his consultant brochure and presentation material. He landed a large contract within two months. It seemed like a miracle. For Mark, the true miracle was seeing the possibility of being grateful despite the discomfort.

The second form affirmation can take is being grateful for the pleasures we receive: a beautiful sunset, a letter from a dear friend, an unexpected raise in salary. You might think that affirming these gifts would be natural. After all, how much simpler can you get than being grateful for what brings you joy or happiness? Yet we don’t often do it. In the normal course of events, we spend only a short time with them before Monkey Mind once again directs our attention to the past or future.

Gerry was an architect and felt great that he and his assistant had finished some critical preliminary renderings well and on time. He told me, "It was at the end of the day and I felt very proud and grateful that we had done such a good job, but no sooner did I feel that appreciation than Monkey Mind came in with‘But what if the clients don’t like what you did? How many versions of these renderings are you going to have to go through? Don’t be grateful too quickly.’"

Affirming Your Basic Nature

The third form of affirmation I’d like to suggest is affirming the attributes that are inherent in your standards of integrity. You’ve probably noticed by now that we’re not using affirmations to deny or escape difficult circumstances, but rather to help us stay with what is true.

Emilie Cady, in her pioneering book Lessons in Truth, said that "to affirm anything is to assert positively that it is so, even in the face of all contrary evidence." The qualities [that comprise] your standards of integrity... express the genuine person you are. Affirming them will give power to that which already exists inside you. You can do this no matter what "contrary evidence" your Monkey Mind dishes up.

Affirming who you really are, your basic nature, is simple. It doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination. You start by declaring that you are willing and follow it with the attribute you are willing to be. For instance, you say, "I am willing to be courageous," or "I am willing to be loyal," or whatever is true for you.

Will you try this right now? Say the words out loud. See how they feel on your tongue. Repeat them to yourself each night for at least one week. What do you perceive? Is a spark of gratitude present? I asked Alan to do this, and this is what he reported:

"This was much easier for me than I expected. My mind didn’t go nuts. In fact, it seemed natural. At first it felt like I wasn’t saying that I was these qualities, only that I was willing to be. After a while something happened. One night when I was saying them, I got this flash! Of course I was courageous, truthful, loyal, and intelligent! That was not the question. The real question was am I going to demonstrate that this is who I am? It does no good to have these attributes if I’m not doing something with them. I’m glad to be me. It’s an adventure."

Affirming and then expressing your standards of integrity prepares you to say "Yes" to abundance, and to feel gratitude. Connecting with your standards gives you the fortitude to look and see and tell the truth about everything on your path... . When you see that you are out of alignment with your standards, take authentic action to restore the balance that comes with integrity. In fact, allow yourself to keep in touch with your standards so that the imbalance doesn’t even occur. Ask yourself how you can express your standards in your everyday life. And acknowledge yourself fully when you do!

I sometimes start the day by looking for ways to express trustworthiness and loyalty and compassion. Those are the qualities I want to shine from my heart through my actions. By no means do I do a perfect job. But I like to think that taking a proactive stance like this gives me more of a footing as I dance with abun-dance.

This article is excerpted from the book The Energy Of Money, by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D. Copyright ©1997, 1999 by Maria Nemeth, Ph.D. Reprinted by arrangement with Ballantine Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: