Everyone views life with their own unique lens. Imagine if you could pick up a pair of glasses and experience life in a completely different way. One pair of glasses could be one of empathy, another with a "why me" view point, and another with a lens of gratitude. There's an infinity number of unique glasses you could ultimately wear.
This is real life. You can change the way you experience life through changing the way you look at life. If you decide to look at life with a lens of "why me" then everything you experience will be happening to you. When you are at a red light and you have a possibility to run late for work your perspective could be, "why did I have to get this red light, it would happen to me, this is ruining my day." Your day moving forward will probably reflect this attitude.
What if instead you had a lens of gratitude? You could be at that same red light and share the perspective of, "let me take this moment to breathe and relax at this red light." Imagine the flow of your day continuing with this beautiful mindset.
Perspective is everything.
When you live life with a lens of gratitude it's easy to see the light, love and lessons in all you experience. The more you live life through this lens, the more opportunity, growth and joy you will experience.
Happiness to me is being grateful for the present moment. When you are grateful you are happy. When you are grateful you are living to your truth and operating from your center. When you are on center you get to optimize your flow and your enjoyment of life. Another benefit of operating from your center is you get to know when you're off center. This may sound obvious but understanding your balance and center can help you return to your flow state that much faster.
Try this exercise to start your day on center. And the rest of the day you'll be able observe yourself to know if you're off center. I'll give you another exercise as well to get back to center when you're off balance.
Start your day on center: Begin your day with an action that brings you joy. This could be calling your mom, taking a warm shower or reminding yourself what you're grateful for. When you start your day on center everything else after that will be a reaction to that first action you started your day with. Let's say you get off center...
Get back on center: Anytime you feel yourself getting off center try the cancel, clear and connect method. I've learned this from a very young age and adopted it from my father. It has helped me exponentially. Anytime you begin to experience a negative or attacking thought say to yourself, "cancel". Cancel that negative or attacking thought. We have over 40,000 thoughts a day and many of them are repetitive. The goal is to shift these repetitive negative thoughts to positive ones to keep you on an upward trend. Once you cancel, you then can "clear" those thoughts and "connect" back to that feeling you had when you started your day with that joyful activity or any joyful memory.
These two exercises can help you view life through a lens of gratitude.
Perspective is everything.
To experience the good you must see it as the good.
On that note, enjoy the beautiful day wherever you are because you get to make it that way.
Unconditionally,
Jacqlyn Burnett