The Importance of Practicing Gratitude By Marla Goldberrg


The Importance of Practicing Gratitude By Marla Goldberrg


If you would like to know more about gratitude, self acceptance and forgiveness, check out this Chaos & Light Podcast with Marla Goldbergg.

 

I am often asked, “what’s the most important thing that you practice daily?” My number one, most important practice, is gratitude. I began this practice twelve years ago. I started stating what I was grateful for each morning as I walked my dog. My initial list was pretty short in comparison to what I declare in my practice today.

What began to happen to me as my gratitude practice grew was amazing. I realized that by the time I was done with my declarations, I was bursting with joy. I could barely contain my happiness. I would find myself singing and dancing around my kitchen.

No matter how I may roll out of bed, or how busy my morning is, I always say thank you to Spirit for all my abundance. I end my day the same way. When I close my eyes to go to sleep, I thank the Universe for a minimum of three positive experiences I had that day.

I use the word practice, for when you practice something, you perform an action over and over again until you gain proficiency over the item practiced. Practicing gratitude is no different than a golfer practicing their swing, or a yogi practicing the asanas. By doing something over and over again, you gain insight, appreciation, understanding, and proficiency of the universal law of attraction. The more you acknowledge your blessings and gifts, the more blessings and gifts you’ll receive.

When you begin your path of gratitude, you will soon feel your frequency shift. Your life will reflect your plentitude back to you, bringing a more positive impact into your life. Think of it like a boomerang; the more thanks you send out into the universe, the more abundance will come back to you. In addition, you will begin to see and feel the changes that come to you, you will increase your joy, happiness, positivity, optimism, improved health, heightened brain function, and an overall enhanced view of your life. It can be an absolute game-changer for you and your life’s circumstances.

Developing your practice of gratitude is one of the easiest skills to attain. As the Nike tagline states, “Just do it!” and If you’re not sure what to be thankful for, start with the easiest items such as being happy that you have your health, a roof over your head, food to eat, etc. As you develop your routine, you will find yourself appreciating everything positive you have and experience, and what might be perceived as negative. Each experience you encounter is another stepping-stone to your growth.

How do you start your practice, you might ask? You begin by purchasing a small notebook and journaling what you’re grateful for. You can state your thanks aloud while walking or driving.  Anywhere you feel like saying thanks, you can say it, whether aloud or silently. You can stand in front of the mirror as you’re getting ready for the day and look yourself in the eye and state all you’re thankful for. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

What’s more important than how you state your gratitude is the fact that you state them.  When you do, the universe will hear you and respond accordingly. It’s okay if you’re skeptical of this exercise, for once you start to make it part of your daily routine, you’ll wonder why it took you so long to incorporate this practice into your day.

 

About the Author

Marla is an Energy Healer, Intuitive, Speaker, Teacher, International Best Selling Author, and Host of Guided Spirit Conversations podcast.

Marla Goldberrg Head Shot

Her mission and purpose in life is to inspire, motivate and educate her clients and all that she connects with through her books and podcast, through the use of her tools and techniques to help them enhance or shift their life circumstances.

Marla began her spiritual journey during a very difficult time in her life she was forced to evaluate her choices and what direction her life was taking. ​During this time of evaluation, she serendipitously met her first teacher at a women’s conference.  As Marla sat through her presentation, she resonated with everything that she said. By the time her talk was completed Marla knew that she would be attending her school.

During her three years of attendance at Inner Focus Mystery School, she was trained in 14 different healing techniques.  Following my graduation of Inner Focus, she continued her education by learning additional techniques.  To date, Marla has been trained in over 20 healing modalities.

​In addition to her practice with clients, Marla is a contributing author in 2 best-selling books, one becoming an International bestseller.  She has also authored her first solo writing endeavor: My F*cking Long Journey to Loving Myself: A Guide to a Shorter Path.  Marla also host a podcast, Guided Spirit Conversations.

Find out More:

Website: www.marlagoldberrg.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/marlagoldberrg/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mghealing/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarlaGoldberrg

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Seeing the Sacred

Seeing the Sacred

I know that social media isn’t very good for me, nor is obsessing over the news. And yet, I find myself not being able to look away. While I do think it is important to be informed, what am I really gaining from being so immersed in it?  I can’t help but think from an energetic perspective that while my mind thinks I can stay above the fray – where is my energy? If I’m spending even a portion of my day swearing at my computer because of all the craziness, clearly I’m deeply entrenched in it all.  I need to remember to reboot my system and I decided that my antidote to all this mayhem is to stop myself and take a moment to see the sacred – every day and as needed.

What is the Sacred?

Now for me, the sacred means connecting with the essence of something. It means stripping away all of the pretense and narrative and being with the beauty and purity of the moment. It can be a single moment or a collection of them but its really about recognizing the divinity in something. Sometimes that means stripping away a lot of layers but most of the time it is just witnessing what’s right there in front of me. 

So while it can definitely be during times of prayer or meditation, for me finding the sacred does not have to happen at a church or at my altar. I find the most sacred moments are those that just sneak up on me. Like when I’m reading with my son and he just snuggles in a little closer. Or the brief moments when he holds my hand while we are walking, something he rarely does anymore now that he’s approaching eleven. I often find it in nature too, but again it doesn’t have to be on a hike. There is this green ivy that crawls along my balcony wall and often birds will come and play in it singing their songs. To me that is sacred. It’s a beautiful and pure moment stripped down to its essence.

Wherever you are be all there.

~ Jim Elliot

I think we miss a lot of these moments in our lives. After all, I can go on a hike surrounded by beauty and be thinking the whole time about what groceries I need to get for dinner that night. Then, there can be times when I’m walking down the sidewalk and I fall in love with a single flower that grows through a crack in the asphalt. That’s what seeing the sacred is all about, finding the beauty between the cracks. Being able to be awed by that one perfect moment.

See the Awe-some

I’ve thought a lot about what makes a moment sacred and I’ve boiled it down to what I call the three As. Attention, appreciation, and awe. If I’m not paying attention, I miss the sacred. It might just be a little blip on the divine radar and if I’m focused on all the cracks, I might miss the flower. And let’s face it, sometimes those cracks deserve our attention too. The next element is appreciation. I have this silly thing that I do when I see the birds enjoying my balcony. I say out loud, “Thank you for sharing your space with me”. My loudness depends on who’s listening, I may be thankful, but I acknowledge I also sound a little crazy. This is my way of giving a tip of my hat to the moment and to the creature that is sharing it with me. The last thing is acknowledging the awe that is born out of the other two. Gratitude and mindfulness are the parents of awe. 

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt is awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

~ Albert Einstein

I describe this feeling as my heart opening and I can feel it reaching out to envelop the sacred. It is almost like it is creating the container to hold the moment but in doing so it is also transformed by it. It is the experience of the divinity in me melding with the divinity all around me. Sometimes it reaches out far enough that it takes my breath away a little. I think the more sacred we can find in the regular moments is how we stay sane in all of this. Awe and frustration can’t occupy the same space.

So I encourage you to find your sacred too. Maybe it’s in your favorite piece of poetry or an opera. Or the color of the fall leaves or the song of the little bird that lands on your balcony. As I write this I can hear the noon bells from the church below. There is a sacredness in their sound too. It’s all around us if we are looking.

(c) Can Stock Photo / ipopba