Top o’ the Mornin’ to Ya!
TLDR: Discover how gratefulness sinks from your conscious to your unconscious mind, transforming your heart and mindset, and why stopping in moments of frustration to say thank you changes your outlook.
What?
Thank you, Lord, for my life. Thankfulness. It’s Thanksgiving week. What a blessing. Gratefulness is such a powerful tool. Gratefulness sinks through from your conscious to your unconscious. It changes your heart. It changes your mindset. It changes your vision.
As a daily practice, as part of my journaling process, I write down three things that I’m thankful for from the last twenty-four hours or that are top of mind for the moment. That thankfulness just transforms my thinking. It transforms my brain. Right after that, I write my learnings. Just before that, I did my visualization, my affirmations, and my meditation. So it sets the stage for my day.
When things are going crappy though, you can stop and be thankful in the middle of the day. My son yesterday, we were cleaning up. My parents are coming to visit for the holiday, and he was helping. But part of his helping was singing this stupid song – banana butter butter, I don’t even know what it was, but it was just aggravating.
As I sat and listened to my wife struggle with the music, I just realized he’s helping. He’s cleaning and putting dishes away in the kitchen and doing his little thing at the same time. So I said “Thank you, Lord. I’m grateful for Spencer’s help in the kitchen for doing the work, that he can contribute.”
Then we went out and worked on the driveway. We’ve got a bunch of rock we’re removing from the driveway. He came up a number of times during the day and said “How can I be more helpful?” Liz is using the blower, and he wants to be more helpful. So he says “How can I be more helpful and more of a contributor?” Oh, I’m so grateful for that.
Why?
I share this because Kingdom Family Leaders get trapped in frustration over minor annoyances that block us from seeing what’s actually happening. My son was helping, but the aggravating song was all I could focus on. The irritation blinded me to the gift.
Gratefulness isn’t just a nice spiritual practice – it literally transforms your brain. It sinks from your conscious mind to your unconscious mind, changing your heart, mindset, and vision. When you practice daily gratitude, you’re reprogramming that 95% unconscious that runs the show.
Lesson
Gratefulness is a powerful tool that transforms thinking at the deepest level. When practiced daily – writing three things you’re thankful for from the last twenty-four hours – it sets the stage for your entire day. Combined with visualization, affirmations, and meditation, it creates the foundation for how you see and respond to everything.
But the real power shows up in the middle of aggravating moments. When things are going crappy, you can stop right there and choose gratitude. This isn’t positive thinking or pretending problems don’t exist. It’s shifting focus from the irritation to the actual gift present in the situation.
My son’s annoying song was real. But so was his help in the kitchen. So was his heart to contribute. So was his repeated question throughout the day: “How can I be more helpful and more of a contributor?” The gratitude didn’t eliminate the aggravation – it revealed what I was missing while focused on it.
Gratefulness changes your vision. When you say “Thank you, Lord” in the middle of frustration, you’re training your unconscious mind to see differently. Over time, you start noticing contribution before irritation, help before hindrance, blessing before burden.
The practice works in any moment – at work, at home, in the community, in driving. Did somebody offend you? Close your eyes (if you’re not driving) and say a little prayer of thanksgiving for something related or around that thing. This redirects your unconscious from threat-focus to blessing-focus.
Apply
Today when you encounter something aggravating – at work, at home, in traffic, anywhere – stop immediately and find one thing related to that situation you can be thankful for. Say it out loud or write it down: “Thank you, Lord, for…” Do this multiple times today, especially in frustrating moments. Notice how it shifts what you see.
You be blessed!
