Happy September 1st! It’s the final week of our summer meditation course and my daughter is here to share more with you and offer tips on meditating. Last week, we learned how to ground and center ourselves. This week, we will be directing our focus toward gratitude.
Summer Meditation- Gratitude
Finding gratitude in our daily lives is essential to a happy life. A single thought of gratitude can change the entire mood of your day and help to shift your perspective on life. It can help us to enjoy the moment more, welcome more love into our hearts, and overall help us to live a happier life. Most of the time, gratitude can easily be found when we simply reflect on our life and remember all the little things that make it so special.
When we forget to make space for gratitude, we can feel tense and frustrated and develop a negative outlook on life. That’s why adding a minute of gratitude to your meditation practice is the perfect way to ensure you make time for it every single day and keep all those negative thoughts away.
The Meditation
For this, close your eyes, breathe slowly, and allow yourself to ease into the meditation. Once you are calm, begin to direct your focus toward a positive thought. This can be done through a simple affirmation of “I am blessed. I am safe. I am happy.” Or, this can be directed towards a specific aspect of your life. For example, “I am grateful for my family. I am grateful for a cozy home. I am grateful for food on my table.”
Find at least one thing to focus on that you are grateful for, but feel free to keep listing them if you have more. When you list them, take a moment to think about each one of these memories or parts of your life that correspond with this affirmation, and let the feeling of joy from those moments overcome you, filling you with love, happiness, and a feeling of contentment. Breathe in this feeling, reliving the happiness of it all over again, and breathe out any tension you are holding onto.
Stay here as long as you’d like, reflecting on everything in your life that makes your life truly beautiful and welcoming the warm feeling that goes along with it. Then, once you are ready, breathe slowly, return to the moment, and open your eyes. Sit peacefully for a moment and feel the positive feelings that are now within you. Recognize that by simply stating what you are grateful for and taking time to acknowledge that feeling of gratitude towards different parts of your life, you begin to feel more grounded, present, and balanced in your life. And the best part is this is something you can do anytime, anywhere, with a little intention and a little quietness.
Wrap Up
When we choose to count our blessings each day rather than our problems, the problems we do have start to feel a little less overbearing, and our life starts to feel fuller. Truly, all it takes is a little focus and acknowledgment to shift the reality of our world.
Thank you for joining me on this meditation journey! I hope that over these last five weeks, you’ve found some new ways to incorporate more quietness into your daily routine and have begun to recognize the importance of slowing down and connecting to the moment. Share your thoughts below, and let me know if you plan to make meditation a part of your life or how else you plan to incorporate more quietness into your daily routine.
This was lovely Courtney. All your posts are terricic.
I am in California in a rural foothill community called San Andreas. It has been a terrible summer for my roses. i have had a big deer problem because we need a new fence 7!/2 ‘ tall. There are little black spots on so many roses,dalhias and the lilies. Some of the trees too. These are odd because I can wipe the front of the leaves they can come of. Te back of the leaves they eat a hole through the leaf?? Do you have these? I have sprayed with an organic bioadanced spray several times. These black tiny dots come back and we have tried Captain Jacks cooper fungacide they still come back. Do you know what this is??? Thank you for all of your gorgeous ideas.