You’ve probably heard about how being grateful can change your life, and that you’ll get more to be grateful for if you practice gratitude as a daily habit. But what is behind this? Why is it that so many people know about this but still don’t put it into practice? Are they missing a trick? What about those that do practice it, and advocate it as part of their online offering of courses and webinars? Are they always hugely successful? If you’ve ever wondered about any of these questions, this post is going to provide some clarity!
According to Dr John Demartini, your feelings of appreciation can affect your degree of wealth. He says that appreciation is a magically attractive force that can draw to you whatever you are thankful for. But get this… on the other side of the coin, being ungrateful or just not appreciating what you have, is a repellent force in the same powerful way.
Being appreciative of money and the freedoms it can offer is hugely important.
Still a little skeptical? Think about what happens in a relationship if you don’t appreciate your partner. They don’t feel valued, and they are likely to eventually move on. Or if someone gives you a gift and you don’t thank them for it, they will be unlikely to give you another in the future, or if they do, they probably won’t put too much effort into choosing it.
It’s quite perfectly summarized in this sentence from Dr Demartini:
The quality and quantity of what you receive in life is proportionate to your degree of appreciation. Money and wealth are no different, and when you don’t appreciate them, they go to the people that do.
And another eye-opening quote from him:
Whoever appreciates nothing, receives nothing.
Are you organized with all your assets and liabilities? It doesn’t matter if you’re in a black hole of debt, or if you’ve just paid off the last cent owing on your credit card, or if your savings account is growing faster than you could have imagined. You need to be organized when it comes to your finances.
An organized financial house receives more to organize than one that is disorganized.
I like to use an Excel spreadsheet with numerous tabs, starting from left to right with the assets, and then the liabilities. So each tab is named: “A-[asset name]”, or “L-[liability name]”. Each sheet has the relevant information for that particular asset or liability and I update them regularly. For example, if you have a liability that is a credit card, you’ll be paying into that regularly, so it needs to be updated on your spreadsheet just as often.
When you have a clear picture of what you own and what you owe, you can start to focus on your financial goals. Don’t worry if you are in the red. Now that you know just how much you are in the red, you’re aware how much extra each month you need to bring in, and now you can get to work.
If you can’t get a second (or third) part-time job, there are a huge number of different online / work-from-home opportunities that you can do just to bring in some additional money to pay off debt. A lot of these can be done temporarily if you are only looking to bring in the additional income to wipe out the debt. If you want to stop the work once you’ve paid everything, you can.
Isn’t this a wonderfully empowering feeling? You CAN actually earn extra money, starting tonight if you put your mind to it.
(I’ve created a free course to walk you through getting set up on Fiverr and finding your first client to earn extra money. Click here to read more about it and sign up.)
There are some side hustles that would probably be better off not attempting if you’re just going to be doing the work on a temporary basis, for example working as a virtual assistant would be best if you could support whatever clients you manage to get, on a longer term basis otherwise they may prefer to find another VA who can be there for them for more than just a few months.
(Read my post about starting your own virtual assistant side hustle here.)
To start an online side hustle this weekend and bring in your first client this weekend, read this post, and if you’d like some other ideas of side hustles you can do from home (or anywhere) that have low start-up costs, read this post.
Dr Demartini says that anything you fail to appreciate is baggage that weighs you down and will hold you back financially. Appreciation is what can raise your frequency, whereas ingratitude will lower it. Many of us say things like, “I can’t wait until I’ve paid off my debt, my life will be so much better.” Or, “When I’ve saved xyz I will be able to relax.” This is basically just another way of not appreciating the now, and what your life has to offer you at the present time. So many of us are constantly living in the past or the future, and living in this way becomes a habit. Living mostly in the past also often leads to depression and living mainly in the future is usually a sure way to experience anxiety.
Without gratitude for the things in your life now, you’re just living in quiet desperation instead of living a life of inspiration and abundance.
It’s not an easy task, but try not to pay your bills with a feeling of resentment. When I’m about to pay my winter heating bill, I’m normally feeling like it’s a huge annoyance to be paying out such a chunk of money for something that’s intangible. But I have to remind myself that the utility company provided me a service, and my home was warm during some miserable, freezing cold winter days and nights, thanks to their service. This could feel like a bit of a stretch of the mind, but in short, I received the service and now I need to pay for that service.
Remember the saying, “Payment is due when service is rendered.” Being in this type of grateful state when paying your bills has the power to transform your relationship with wealth. It’s difficult, and it’s all too easy to forget to do this, but when it’s practiced regularly, you’ll see results. It’s a universal law, so you can’t not see a change for the better!
Whatever you’re appreciative of or grateful for makes up your heaven, and whatever you’re ungrateful for makes up your hell – Dr John Demartini
I’m a constant student of Dr Demartini, and have been ever since I first met him back in 2005. He says that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Research it, read all about it and then teach it to solidify your knowledge. I’m still always learning so much and don’t always remember to implement the practice of gratitude daily, but I recently purchased a gratitude journal to help me get back into this habit properly! If you’d like to get one for yourself, see the picture below and give it a try – join me in implementing gratitude – I’d love to hear how you get on! (NOT an affiliate link.)
Or have you perhaps already been practicing gratitude regularly? Has it changed your life in any ways?
When other pinners pin my content to their Pinterest boards, I’m so appreciative! It means that they got some value from what I had to say, and I’m glad I could be of some help – because a lot of effort and thought goes into each post 🙂
Follow my Universal Laws Pinterest board or my Affirmations Pinterest board for inspirational content.
