Gratitude is always a force for good.Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash

I know that I’m incredibly fortunate. I have an amazing wife, a crazy but loving family, awesome friends, and acquaintances; I wouldn’t trade them for anything. A comfortable home, a great car, and amazing potential and possibilities available to me. I have amazing people, places, and things both tangible and intangible in my life that I’m deeply, hugely, tremendously thankful for.

I’m not trying to brag, I just want to express gratitude. I’m saying thank you, universe. Because I’ve been incredibly fortunate, and I recognize that appreciation for this is hugely important.

I know people who are struggling. Some a little, some a lot. There are people in my life with physical, mental, emotional, and/or spiritual challenges. And while I sometimes feel some guilt and shame because of all the ways that I’m fortunate, I recognize that it’s hugely important to be grateful and express that. Openly.

Life’s not easy. I’m in a good place, having a good day. But I have had more than my share of problems, challenges, bad days, horrific experiences, and the like. I’m here now and experiencing many, many of the amazing things that life has to offer. Even the bad things that happen, I am grateful for.

Because I’m in a relatively good position with my life, I strive to do what I can to be of service to other people. And I’m thankful I can do that.

Doing what I can when I can

As I point out a lot, you and I are seriously limited in what we can do for things like politics, bad businesses, world affairs, and all the things happening well outside our immediate circles. Yes, I can vote, boycott bad businesses, attend protests, and the like. That, however, is about all that I can do.

What I can also do is share my philosophy with you. To what end? So that I can show you a perspective you might not have otherwise considered. To maybe help you see potential, possibilities, and new angles you were unable to see before. Additionally, in some instances, I might show you that you’re not alone in this universe.

When you see throngs of people shouting support for a narcissistic cult leader, watch the people elected to supposedly represent you represent naught but their self-interests, and see the dismantling of institutions meant to do good for the many, it’s easy to feel alone. Lost. Defeated. Scared. Uncertain. All of the above and more.

It’s important to be aware of all that. If you’re not aware of it, you can’t do anything about it. Yet there’s a fine line between awareness and inundation. You do not need to be so hyper-aware that you lose yourself and your self-sovereignty in this mess.

This is why I share my perspective on nontoxic positivity, mindfulness, conscious reality creation, and overall self-awareness. Through this, I believe I help people to find their balance, their center, and maybe even their empowerment. Because nobody can empower you – you need to find it for yourself. I have suggestions I share along that line.

A truly ginormous resource is gratitude.

Thank you, universe

Every single self-help guru, religious icon, spiritual leader, and all the philosophies expound the power of gratitude. Saying thank you and feeling genuine gratitude is a tool of ultimate empowerment.

First, gratitude is NEVER negative. Sarcastic and ironic, maybe, but not in-and-of-itself negative. Second, giving gratitude is just as powerful as receiving it.

I don’t know about you, but being thanked always feels good. Like, really good. It feels like you’ve leveled up, been told you are worthy, and it’s a positive thought and feeling combination.

Likewise, when you give someone or something gratitude, you feel the same sensation. Giving or getting, gratitude is powerful. More than that, though, it’s empowering.

So many things in the universe – most of them utterly false and/or artificial – are tools of disempowerment. Finding and/or creating empowering things for yourself diffuses and lessens their influence and harm.

In a world hell-bent on keeping you from realizing your own power, whatever tools are available to you so that you can take what control you can are important. Gratitude is chief among them. Hence, thank you, universe, for everything.

Photo by laura adai on UnsplashMy personal directive

My deepest desire is to help others. If I can show you a way to your empowerment, even if it’s not my way, then I have done the good I seek to put out into the universe. That’s incredibly important to me! So if I can do it, yay!

This has nothing to do with glorification or my ego. This is my love language. It expands beyond my immediate circles to anyone who cares to pause and read what I’m sharing. My main goal in this life is to be of service to anyone and everyone that I can, to help people make and find their way in the world, and be a beacon of reason, kindness, compassion, and empathy.

Thank you, universe, for letting me be here, now, and able to provide this service. I’m grateful to be here, now, in this time and place with this mind, body, and spirit. And to you – thank you for reading.

Saying and feeling thank you, universe, isn’t hard

It’s all about practicing active conscious awareness (mindfulness) of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and the positivity or negativity of your approach to direct your actions.

When you recognize and acknowledge that you can use your choices and decisions to be actively, consciously aware, you can apply mindfulness to express gratitude, which is the most powerful force of positivity imaginable. Knowing that saying and feeling thanks, giving genuine gratitude, is always a force for good, you can use this to take more control of your life experience with active conscious awareness.

This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.

Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity — from the vast cylinder that exists between them — shifts life in a way that opens greater dialogue. From that dialogue, you can recognize, explore, and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.

Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself opens the way for a positive approach and attitude via your actions. This can lead to realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.

The better aware you are of yourself, here and now, the better you can choose and decide what, how, and why your life experiences will be. When you empower yourself, it can spread to those around you and empower them as well. That is an amazing conduit to help reason to overcome fear in the collective consciousness.

Thank you for coming along on this journey.

This is the six-hundred-fifteenth (615) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, reblog, and spread the positivity.

Please visit here to explore all my published fiction and non-fiction.

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