When we think of wealth most of us picture a big house with a long driveway, a G5 private jet, a yacht with a super model basting on the sundeck, a pimped out Mercedes with shinny rims or maybe some old lady with her face stapled to her ears wearing a coat made of dead minks. Whatever your version wealth is one thing is for sure, most people are blind to the real wealth that lies just beneath their own nose. If we think about it, what we are really after isn’t the things themselves, but the emotion these things create. If we can simply recreate these emotions without having to buy a yacht or win the lottery we could really be on to something.
Now I’m not going to fully discount yachts and big houses, these things have their place and can provide abundance in the realm of material needs, but their inherent problem is that they are subject to change. Accordingly, when you rely solely on things that change for your happiness you set yourself up for unhappiness. Take the yacht for instance, it will one day breakdown and maybe even when you’re cruising in the Pacific Ocean beyond the sight of land with your in laws who you can’t stand. Stranded for a few days, you may contemplate facing sharks and drowning just to get away and swim towards what you think might be land.
Ok, so that analogy could be a little far fetched, but what if you owned a big ass house with 6 bedrooms, maids quarters, a gym, an arcade, and a dance floor and one day you find out your well respected Dad who everyone had admired, who you looked up to and worked for, who was once chairman of NASDQ, who everyone entrusted their money to, one day tells you he’s been running a multi-billion dollar ponzi scheme and lost the retirement funds for thousands and thousands of your fellow countrymen and cohorts.
Now the world hates you, vilifies you, wants your head on platter and wants all your possessions including your house even though you had nothing to do with it. All that you had relied on in the past for your happiness including your house, your reputation and your friends are now changing. With nothing to fall back on, the pressure mounts like an iceberg penetrating the hull of the Titanic, uncertainty overwhelms your entire being and drives you to hang yourself in the room next to the room where your 2 year old child is sleeping.
Of course this is a true story about Mark Madoff, son of Bernie Madoff the worlds most notorious ponzi scheme creator and paints a very vivid picture of the frailty of material wealth. Its great for providing comfort, its fun to go on vacations, it takes pressure off paying the bills and doing all the crappy jobs, but it can’t save you when things change and THINGS ALWAYS CHANGE.
Instead there is another more stable form of wealth that lies just beneath your nose. You ask: “You mean my mouth?” It could indeed be your mouth if in fact you had gratitude for its ability to chew food, speak words or share a kiss, yet what I’m talking about doesn’t restrict itself just to the mouth or physical features for that matter. No gratitude, which is the key to wealth that nobody wants to talk about, creates millionaires and billionaires every day. Once you decide to express or practice gratitude you instantaneously, like a bolt of lightening, are infused with the same emotions that we associate to “Feeling Good” from a job promotion, a new love or a sports victory, yet the difference is this:
- Its available 24/7
- It’s supply is unlimited
- Its FREE
So How do You Get Grateful?
The easiest way to find out what something is would be to identify the opposite first. The opposite of gratitude is “Complaining”. Complaining for the most part is focusing on scarcity or what you don’t want, don’t have or don’t like. For instance, I wish I had more money, I wish I was on an island in the tropics, they always ruin my day, I feel like crap, the weather sucks. Complaining is what people do when they aren’t grateful and as a result end up POOR, either mentally, physically, financially, spiritually or some combination of these.
Take Action Jackson
Ask yourself right now: How many times during the day do I complain or focus on what I don’t want, don’t have or don’t like?
- First, think about what you could focus on to practice gratitude by changing the focus to what you have or like. For example, Rather than “I feel like crap”, “I’m happy to be alive and breathing” rather than “The weather sucks”, “I love rain and snow clean because they clean the air to make it easier to breath” or rather than “I hate my job” to “Thank god I have a job when so many don’t.”
- Before every meal give thanks either silently or aloud with others. You could thank the sun the soil, the people that worked hard to bring you this food and give thanks for other things or people in your life that you appreciate.
- After you exercise give thanks for its amazing feelings and benefits.
- Tell someone you care about how grateful you are for them.
Do you know of any ways to practice gratitude? Please comment below.
Gratitude is the Best Attitude, when you practice it you are Rich!