01 Aug Practising Gratitude – Are you grateful for you?

Practising gratitude has long been recognised and acknowledged as one of the quickest ways, and an absolutely essential way, of shifting frequency, moving into a deeper heart space and aligning with the flow and energy of abundance; it aligns with the Law of Attraction which is about receiving more of what you are so as you hold the energy of gratitude for all of the incredible things in your life, you naturally and easily attract more of the wonderful, incredible things that you are grateful for.

Gratitude journalling, gratitude lists, morning or evening recanting of everything you’re grateful for can range from the smell of freshly cut grass, to a roof over your head, to money flowing in, to friendships and love and everything else in between.

But let me ask you: how grateful are you for you? Indeed, are you grateful for you? Does your practice of gratitude include you at all?

If not, it should.

Because you being grateful for who you are is an essential component in raising vibration, recognising wholeness and acknowledging yourself as the most significant factor in life around you.

Many years ago – when I was 16 going into 17 and in my first proper job after leaving school, I was anorexic. I was full of self-hatred and I had no idea of how to handle how I felt about myself or about who I believed myself to be, or not be. I didn’t know how to handle strong and often overwhelming emotions and I definitely didn’t know how to handle rampant negative self-talk.

Mindset, emotional intelligence, self-awareness had never been in my world or upbringing and at a time when I was suddenly ‘launched’ out of the school system into a working environment with all of the changes that brings, I had no idea how to manage myself emotionally or mentally. I’d always been a bit of a geek or outside at school – I had a small group of friends, I was never in the popular group and I always felt like I never belonged. Why didn’t I ‘fit’ in? Why didn’t I have ‘loads’ of friends? Why was I the last person to be picked for this team or that team? As a sensitive, or over-sensitive, teen, my head told me that there must be something wrong with me, which began an internal narrative of not being good enough, not being liked etc and which led to a spiral of constant self-judgement. I ended up focussing around something I thought impacted, or might impact, people’s perceptions and opinions, and the one thing I felt I could change – how I looked. A little bit of dieting led to a level control and fuelled a level of self-hatred that I could never have anticipated.

Fast forward to now and it is a very different narrative but the journey from self-loathing to both loving and liking myself was a battle in the early stages. Like most people when discovering spirituality, discovering gratitude quickly followed and it’s not, of course, to say that we don’t practice gratitude irrespective of following a spiritual path or not but often it’s an unconscious recognition rather than a conscious, acknowledged practice.

What I realised through my gratitude practice one day was that I was actually grateful for me. And as I had that moment of realisation, something in me opened and expanded.

I felt bliss moving through my body and it was like all of the love held within me just suddenly flowed through every cell, through every pore – I was experiencing love for me, but also from me. Something was stripped away; a barrier between who I was and who I thought I was just lifted and I knew that I was knowing myself and open to knowing myself in a different way.

Since that day, my gratitude practice has always included being grateful for me. Irrespective of where I am in life or myself (let’s face it, we are not always in the best possible place within ourselves, we all have low days and crap moments) I am always grateful for who I am – even if that gratitude, for example, looks like ‘Today, I am grateful for just being me. I’m grateful for who I am. I’m grateful for knowing I’m a kind and nice person. I’m grateful that I am experiencing this low energy today and I’m grateful that I am aware enough to notice it, to recognise it and to honour it. I’m grateful for liking myself.

In gratitude, honesty matters and our deepest level of honesty needs to be with ourselves, because subconsciously we are the one person who sees, hears and knows everything. We can’t pretend to be grateful – we either are or we aren’t. Sometimes we need to ask the question: Am I grateful for me today? Am I grateful for who I am? – and it’s ok if that is no; that provides a pointer in a direction that it would be useful to look at.

From an energetic, frequency perspective – the whole of you is your most consistent vibrational resonance, which is why being grateful for who you are changes things on a deeper level. You can, and we should, absolutely be grateful for everything we have in life and for everything we enjoy because so many don’t have our privileges. Yet if the gratitude you are practising doesn’t include being grateful for you, whatever that might look like – it might start by being grateful for your achievements and accomplishments, your resilience and strength, your challenges and learnings – hopefully it also moves to include your body, your kindness and your smile, your energy and being…then you’re limiting the potential of gratitude to be a positive force for change in your life.

Being grateful for you opens the door to deeper levels of self-worth, more compassion and understanding, shifting the self-talk narrative and truly appreciating everything you are – even the stuff that perhaps you’d rather change given the opportunity. It creates the opportunity for more self-awareness as you recognise what you do express gratitude for within yourself and what you don’t or aren’t yet willing or able to. Being grateful for who you are empowers deeper self-alignment.

Energy doesn’t lie – and in the world of vibration where resonance matters, who you are has impact and influence. If you’re not grateful for you, for who you are – what actually is your energy saying behind the words you speak and the thoughts you think?