For as long as I can remember I never let bills sit in my house. I have always been as averse to watching bills pile up as I am about dust or dishes in the sink (admittedly, at times more so!). And while it always felt good to be able to pay my bills as I received them, it wasn’t until my gratitude journey began years ago that I started doing something quite interesting with them; at first unconsciously and then with intention.
Every time I mailed bills I would place them one by one in the mailbox, and with each one, before letting it fall into the box and before placing in the next one, I would say: “Thank You!” and “God Bless.”
Once I started to really think about what I was doing and why, I realized that ritual for me was about both offering up gratitude for having the resources to pay my bills at all, with ease, and a grateful heart; as well as a prayer that this would always be so for me (and, of course, that they would reach their intended destination on time). To this day, I maintain that ritual and I remain thankful and blessed as I realize and embrace how much gratitude is at the core of my foundation, my knowing, my living, my service, and my very being.
Imagine being grateful for your bills and blessing them as you pay them?!
You can believe me when I tell you there is so much more to gratitude, appreciation, and approaching all of your life – in aspects big and small, mundane and spectacular – gratefully and with a joyful heart. The interconnected nature of our lives means that as you extend gratitude in one area of your life, that gratitude energy shows up for you in other areas of your life creating more opportunities for you to experience deeper gratitude. And before you know it, you are finding things for which to be grateful everywhere and in everything. That is what it means to live a grateful life. You can also believe me when I tell you that the energy of gratitude is very real … and one of the realest things about gratitude energy is its multiplicative and additive effect:
the more grateful you are today in all things, the more you will have to be grateful for tomorrow, in all things.
Gratitude, like everything else, attracts that which is like unto itself … it’s the law (of attraction). And when it’s the law, you can’t get more real than THAT!
Be complete with your gratitude.
Be joyful in your appreciation.
Be open and receiving with your great, big, beautiful heart!
BE … ILLUMINED!