The Electrifying Impact of Gratitude: Unveiling the Power of Appreciation

KATHLEEN: Today I wanted to talk about developing an attitude of gratitude. The one thing that I discovered years ago, was that when life wasn't doing so well? The only thing I knew what to do at that point was to feel grateful.

KATHLEEN: We take a lot of things for granted. It's not that we intend to take things for granted. I think we're used to having certain things. There's many benefits when we show gratitude. The one thing that I found in how powerful gratitude was for me was back in 2011, my mother had died.

KATHLEEN: There was a lot of things going on in my personal life that I wasn't working at that point. I was in a very bad place.

KATHLEEN: When I was struggling with how to deal with everything that was happening in my life and not really sure how to handle what was going on inside my life. I decided to be grateful and say at thank God I was in Colorado or thank God the sun was out, it was blue skies, it was spring, whatever it was.

KATHLEEN: It was the simplest things. I started becoming present and conscious. I know I've been talking about being present, that's what gratitude is about as well. Being conscious, being present and observing. When we start moving and changing, gratitude has a way of bringing much more into our life.

KATHLEEN: What I have found when I'm feeling grateful, I bring a lot more positiveness towards me. There's an endorphin release that happens. When those endorphins are releasing, you're feeling happier. There's more joy coming towards you.

KATHLEEN: People are nicer to you because you're nicer. You're not in a dark mindset place. We're pessimistic and our world doesn't look good and we're not moving into a place that we want. We think I'll be happy when or I'll be grateful when and no, that's not it.

KATHLEEN: Having a toothbrush is something to be grateful for that. You can actually brush your teeth. Or that you have food in the refrigerator or you have people who love you. Go out in nature and observe is another sign of gratitude.

KATHLEEN: When you start allowing gratitude to come into your life and encompassing your heart, everything starts to change. That was one of the biggest things when I was opening my heart, which was very, very scary at the time.

KATHLEEN: I was allowing, I was feeling grateful. I was allowing things to come in. I was feeling more grateful. There was more joy in my life. I was dancing and all of that made a big difference too. The positiveness that comes to you when your perspective is outward focused rather than inward focused.

KATHLEEN: We take so much for granted and it really does make a difference to count your blessings.

KATHLEEN: The other thing that's important, that I discovered, was when I wake up in the morning or go to sleep at night I take time. It's recommended that you have three things. Start the practice, get yourself a daily journal.

KATHLEEN: When you're taking the daily journal, think about what you're grateful for. Three things can start setting a different tone in how you're perceiving your world.

KATHLEEN: When you go to bed, it's going to help you to fall asleep better because you are not reliving whatever happened in the day or you decided you're not gonna worry about whatever is happening. Gratitude takes you into a different place where you relax, you're feeling more peaceful and then helps with your health issues too.

KATHLEEN: When we're in a different frame of mind where we're expressing joy, feeling joy, feeling happy or grateful, there's more energy that comes towards us because it takes a lot of energy to be negative and dark.

KATHLEEN: It doesn't take more energy to be grateful, but you have more energy because you're grateful. It's the weirdest thing to experience it. Cicero, the Roman philosopher, discussed the subject of gratitude 2000 years ago. He saw the value in it and described it as opening doors and keeping people young.

KATHLEEN: Cicero saw gratitude as a true virtue, but gratitude is way more than a virtue. It is something that we feel deep within us and it is a very strong emotion. When you say something to somebody and tell them that you appreciate who they are or what they did for you, if they did something special, and you say thank you for that and really have a heartfelt experience towards that, they feel that inside and then that gives them all those warm and fuzzies.

KATHLEEN: Now you're creating this concentric circle of pay it forward type thing because a lot of us want to be recognized and acknowledged. We're not always recognized or acknowledged. The world is chaotic and instant gratification and all these 20 year olds and not all 20 year olds, it's a lot of people, there's a lot of entitlement out there.

KATHLEEN: Entitlement actually stops good things from coming in because you're walking around thinking the world owes you or someone owes you. Nobody owes you anything. The world certainly doesn't owe you anything. You are never going to get that and you are never gonna have what you want as long as you continually think that you are entitled.

KATHLEEN: That's one of the biggest observations that I've been noticing in the last several years is where has this entitlement attitude come from? I think it's very destructive because when I have encountered people with an entitlement attitude, they're pretty mean and they're nasty. They think you owe them something. How do I owe you anything?

KATHLEEN: Common courtesy being nice, being polite, that is when your world changes, when you start being a better person, when you're on the outside, and you're living it. Even if the world is not watching you, you're still a nice person.

KATHLEEN: That's when you start seeing things moving further in, closer to who you are. I have found when people are walking around in this entitlement attitude, they have the biggest chip on their shoulder and they're downright mean and nasty. Then you think I'm gonna send them love because they're unhappy. I say thank you for whatever.

KATHLEEN: They showed me something, they gave me a gift, they're showing me how much I've changed, which is a good thing because sometimes those kind of people wanna throw you off your rocker and make you as miserable as they are. I absolutely refuse to go down that road with anyone.

KATHLEEN: The other thing with gratitude, it gives you that sense of belonging. When you're feeling gratitude and you're sharing your gratitude, you start feeling a sense of well- being and that's always a good place. That helps to build your confidence.

KATHLEEN: If you're feeling good about yourself, then you're going to do more good things for yourself. You're going to do good things for other people. You're going to start acknowledging people. You're gonna do a lot more that's coming out of you and you're going to become a bigger person as a result of that as well.

KATHLEEN: There are so many reasons to be healthy. Having good health is huge. I know many people who are in pain and suffering from whatever happened to them. I feel very blessed. I have always, always, always said thank you for my health because I've always had amazing health. I do get sick.

KATHLEEN: I have had issues happen like I broke my hand last year. I've been hospitalized because I had a swollen epiglottis. I've had little serious health issues. I'm grateful for that. But I take care of myself too. I make it a point but my mind is always on, I don't have time to be sick. I don't like being sick. I think it's a waste of time.

KATHLEEN: When I do get sick, I always, I always say you got 24 hours body, I'm going to give you whatever you want in 24 hours. After that, I'm coming back to the world of the living. That's how I feel about it. In that 24 hours I'm gonna sit there and I'll let the body do whatever it needs to do. I'll do whatever I need to do to get myself back on the ground up and running.

KATHLEEN: That's what I think is really important. If things aren't going my way, it's, ok, what am I doing that caused some of this? It always comes down to your thinking and I still have this swampy basement going on and Colorado is still under torrential downpours.

KATHLEEN: A lot of our crops are seriously underwater. The corn crops are coming up and they are buried alive underwater. It's blowing my mind how much water that Colorado has had in the last month.

KATHLEEN: Saturday we decided we were going to start dealing with the water issue on a level that's way beyond what I even wanted to. I want to put my head in the sand and pretend it would go away. That's how I wanted to handle it. That didn't happen.

KATHLEEN: We started dealing with it. Of course, Felix, the cat who's here with me, he came out and let me know he was fine. By five o'clock that night, something was wrong with him. Something was seriously wrong. I was terrified. We ended up going to an emergency clinic. He ended up having a blocked urinary tract. I knew he was gonna die.

KATHLEEN: There was no doubt the way he was acting. He was gonna die if I didn't get treatment. There were two women that weren't pleasant. It was not a good situation. My emotions were high. I wasn't grumpy or bitchy or anything.

KATHLEEN: I was emotional and my partner wanted to pick up the cat and leave. I said, but I don't know where else we can take him. This is now nine o'clock at night. He had been in this hospital for two hours and he wasn't being treated because they wanted money. I was very, very upset about that.

KATHLEEN: I talked to the office manager on Monday told her about what my experience was. We brought Felix home five o'clock in the morning the next day because I only paid for eight hours of service. My cat was back to normal more or less. He's still on medication.

KATHLEEN: He has to be confined right now to get him to relax and make sure that there's no more blockages. He's on a special diet. Even though I was in all of this and even though my basement is doing what it's doing, what I found with this practice of being grateful is that I have a better coping mechanism.

KATHLEEN: I'm not emotionally distraught. I'm not running off in anger like I used to. I'm not feeling like the world is against me. When you start developing an attitude of gratitude, you start realizing that life is going to happen and it's how do you handle yourself when life is happening?

KATHLEEN: Do you sit there and get angry and be grumpy and pissy or do you just start taking it with a grain of salt and work through it? You move through whatever needs to get done. That's what I do now.

KATHLEEN: I'm so blown away since I started this practice of developing gratitude and really looking at it. Yes, I'm very grateful that Felix is alive because when they handed me that $6-8,000 bill for the gold treatment, I was ready to put the cat down. He was only seven and I was ready to put him down. I sat there and I had my head in my hands and I'm, what do I do?

KATHLEEN: What do I do? Then I looked up at the woman who handed me the bill and I said, this is what we're going to do. I told her what we were going to do. I said, now you put a bill together to get this cat out of a crisis situation and she went off and did it.

KATHLEEN: That's when the problems all started. I have had cats long enough to know a lot of things I've dealt with a lot of illness with my animals over the years. But this was a first for me. I knew that what I asked her to do, we would be able to get this cat taken care of. I was still grateful.

KATHLEEN: That was the thing. It was that I was able to maintain my composure and that was huge because I wasn't a victim to what was happening. I wasn't emotionally distraught. I wasn't raging. I was doing my best to stay in control.

KATHLEEN: In my basement, I can't even tell you how much water that I take out of my basement all the time. When I decided this is a message because from abundance, he took abundance and yet abundance remained. Water is your emotions. Water is fluidity. It can be abundance in your life. It could be a lot of things.

KATHLEEN: I'm sitting here, there's a message and I have no idea what that message is right now. I know that there's a message and I'm still looking forward and asking for the message. I look at the rain and it's, ok, well, we got sump pump down there and we empty buckets of water and that's all I'm doing.

KATHLEEN: That's all I'm doing. We pulled the cats out of the basement, closed the door and we're going to continue moving on. That's the only thing I know what to do at this moment. The basement has to stop, it has to stop raining for it to dry before I can tell you the next step.

KATHLEEN: So this doesn't happen in the future, I get a kick out of everything and this all starts when I started the show. I think it's even more funny because it's what it is. I have a different attitude about how I'm handling life right now.

KATHLEEN: There are so many benefits with gratitude. Besides making you happier and I am definitely a walking testimonial to that. You also become more optimistic.

KATHLEEN: I really believe that. I truly believe that regardless of what's happening in the world right now or what's happening in my personal life, I still feel like everything is working out. Everything is going to be fine and I'm gonna do whatever I'm capable of doing to make that happen.

KATHLEEN: I don't feel overwhelmed. I think that's probably the biggest piece of feeling grateful is that overwhelmed feeling is gone. I remember there were times when things would happen like when I had a water loss in my other home and I had no bathrooms. I was in constant overwhelm because I'm taking a shower in my garage because the abatement contractors have portable showers.

KATHLEEN: That's what they have to have on an abatement job. I had to have abatement because I had asbestos in my home. Everything on that floor was down was down and I'm here in subzero weather in my garage taking a shower. I was overwhelmed.

KATHLEEN: I was just totally overwhelmed the whole time. It was breathe. What's the message? What's the message? What's the message and this time with what's happening, I don't feel overwhelmed. I still feel empowered and in control.

KATHLEEN: I want to talk about how gratitude can help make you patient. There was a research study conducted in Northwestern University where they found that people who practice gratitude on a regular basis tended to be a lot more patient than those that did not.

KATHLEEN: I find that to be true. When we're patient, we're more at ease, we're trusting in a process more, when we're showing patience. I always knew about myself I was not a very patient person.

KATHLEEN: I'm discovering I've become very patient, not always but on a whole, I have become a very patient person. That surprises me. One act does so much for who we are, what we do, how we act in life and how we show up.

KATHLEEN: The other thing it can help improve relationships. We as a society, and I have been guilty of this, when things aren't going well for us, we have a tendency to turn around and take it out on our family and friends, the people we love the most. We figure they love us and they will understand when we're not a nice person. That's totally unfair to them because they don't deserve that.

KATHLEEN: They deserve to be treated with decency and respect. That was one of the biggest things that started to change for me was that I started to appreciate my friends and loved ones more.

KATHLEEN: When I would say, I really love you for this. When you do this, I think this is really cool and I really appreciate when you.... When Sal brings me flowers, it's, you brought me flowers.

KATHLEEN: This is a guy who doesn't believe in flowers and he'll bring flowers home and it makes me feel so good and warm and fuzzy on the inside. He took time to think about me to say I love you.

KATHLEEN: He works down in Denver, which is an hour from where we live now. What's the one thing I can do for him? I can have a nice meal for him when he comes home. The other day, I went up to him and I gave him a great big hug just because. He was really surprised by that and it gave him the warm and fuzzies. Our divorce rates are high and it's because we snap at each other instead of being kind.

KATHLEEN: When we start showing gratitude for the people around us, then your marriages and your relationships become better. People really appreciate you acknowledging them.

KATHLEEN: I know that we don't send thank you cards anymore, but that is a big deal. I know that my mother used to make me send thank you cards for birthday presents or Christmas presents or whatever it was, graduation, confirmation, whatever it was.

KATHLEEN: It would have to be this long thing and you didn't even know, you're a little kid or a teenager, you're I have to write a novel to say thank you. It brought a very negative connotation.

KATHLEEN: What I find now that if I send somebody a thank you note, I receive a thank you note, it makes me feel good because somebody actually took time out of their day to write a note to say thank you.

KATHLEEN: That means something in this crazy, fast, hectic life. That's another way to show gratitude as well. You're developing a better relationship with whoever it is.

KATHLEEN: Aside from that, it improves your sleep because you're in a different state of mind when you're going off into saying I'm thankful. Thank you for this. I'm grateful for this is sending off different endorphins that are going to help you relax instead of being tense.

KATHLEEN: That's why a lot of times people will read at night to stop the mind chatter. I do this every night, I always say thank you every night for the day.

KATHLEEN: I give details of what I'm thankful you for. AI always say I and the father of one because if I'm making that connection with my higher self, God, the universe, whatever I want to call it, then that helps me to relax. I go into nice deep sleep.

KATHLEEN: I've noticed that I don't get depressed like I used to. I used to every now and then I'd be God, I feel depressed and I don't know why.

KATHLEEN: I don't feel that way because I'm feeling good. I'm looking at all the advantages that I have and it's creating much more happiness in my life. That's probably the biggest thing.

KATHLEEN: Even though I gave you tips on how to pay attention and how to measure your happy scale, being grateful really does add to that as well. It gets into the subconscious part of your mind and it starts moving in that direction when you're going into a happier place.

KATHLEEN: You know what you're wanting, the law of attraction starts working. If you have a goal that you want, you have a sense of joy about it, you have to live as if you have it. What would you feel if you had that new home or that new car or that relationship, how would you feel?

KATHLEEN: AIf you're living that way and saying, thank you for bringing this incredible person into my home or thank you for this beautiful home that I have. You're saying it beforehand, what that's doing is that's all going into the subconscious part of the mind and it's going out there and it's going to create it for you.

KATHLEEN: Things start coming to you faster because you're coming from a place of gratitude. It stops that lack that we have a tendency to feel because when we compare ourselves, that's the worst thing you can do is compare yourselves to your neighbors or your friends or whatever.

KATHLEEN: When you stop comparing yourself, you stop seeing lack. I remember in 2011, when my mother had died, I had a lot of things around me. I knew it.

KATHLEEN: I had friends. I had people who love me and all of that, all I could see is I had no money. I focused on that. When I stayed focused on, I have no money. Guess what? I had no money.

KATHLEEN: When I changed how I was looking at the world, how I was seeing things, how I was feeling and wanting to make a difference and go more in a positive place and went into gratitude. It was amazing how my life changed very, very quickly. The money started flowing in again. There's something very powerful about gratitude.

KATHLEEN: It also helps with that entitlement attitude that people have. When you're grateful, you're not expecting the world to give you a hand out. You're gonna do what you need to do and allow it to happen for you.

KATHLEEN: Your life does get better when you have gratitude. You are happier and it improves your relationships. When tragedies come into your life, you have better coping mechanisms so you can get through life a little bit easier.

KATHLEEN: I have tools in how you can start developing a positive gratitude mindset. One of them wake up, have a journal and it doesn't have to be anything fancy.

KATHLEEN: You could have a notepad next to your nightstand and write three things that you're grateful for. Really feel that before you put your feet on the floor, really feel the gratitude. I guarantee you will change the tone of your day.

KATHLEEN: I notice a big difference in my day when I'm feeling grateful in the morning. Having that quiet time, writing down what I'm grateful for, focusing on what I want to get accomplished for the day. Things are going to come up that I may not plan for, but I can go with the flow and that really makes a big difference in setting up a tone for the day.

KATHLEEN: When you go to sleep at night, you want to write what were you grateful for. If it was that I had food in my tummy today. Some people don't get to eat. Something like that. Some people are grateful for that.

KATHLEEN: They have a roof over their head. They have food on the table and in the refrigerator. If you have to do daily chores, sometimes we just hate to do chores. I hate cleaning my house, but I love a clean house. But because of that, I don't hate doing the house.

KATHLEEN: I would rather do something else than clean a house. Maybe one day I'm going to hire somebody to do that. But for now, I clean the house and I'm grateful that I have a house to clean. It makes it easier to clean the house when I'm feeling grateful for all of that.

KATHLEEN: You always want to make sure that you're expressing gratitude to the people around you. That helps you to develop that mindset of being conscious with everyone.

KATHLEEN: Gratitude can empower you. You're going to discover that it's gonna help you in social situations where you come out as a more compassionate, generous person. There are plenty of studies out there that prove the physical and psychological benefits of that as well.

KATHLEEN: It can drive your optimism. You have a totally different opinion about yourself. You see things differently, you feel more optimistic. You believe that the the universe is conspiring in your best interest. It's not conspiring against you.

KATHLEEN: As long as you stay in a dark negative place, you're just going to keep recreating that. When you say I don't want this, the universe hears, I want this.

KATHLEEN: When you say I'm thankful for this even if you don't feel like you have it or feel it, by saying it, the emotion starts coming into it and you start seeing yourself in a different light as well. I started to feel different. I started having a better opinion of myself.

KATHLEEN: I started seeing people's attitudes towards me changed. I was the one who was doing all the changes. I had a lot more energy to move into a new direction. Creativity was flowing. I would get new ideas of what I can do for my businesses. I would come up with new ideas of what can I do or what is it that people need that I can provide a service for?

KATHLEEN: I was invisible. I was an invisible person and I liked it that way because I thought I got my best work done when nobody could see me. But I wasn't the happiest person.

KATHLEEN: That this is helping me to come ou., That was another factor. How much I started to come out when I started feeling good. I felt good that I felt like I wanted to share who I was, what I knew and how I got here. A lot of times we don't know how to get from point A to point B. I know how to get there now.

KATHLEEN: That was one of the reasons why when the show opportunity came up. I did it because I have something to say. That was huge for somebody who didn't know how to speak at one point.

KATHLEEN: I'm gonna go give you a list of some of the most notable benefits that you'll be aware of that abundance already exists in your life. It will help you improve, help you to have more abundance in your life. It will help you to minimize your stress levels. It will make you more optimistic about your future.

KATHLEEN: It will provide you an increased sense of community. It will improve your resilience to handling difficult events. It will increase your sense of emotional well-being. It will increase the amount of physical activity in your life. It will help you to sleep better.

KATHLEEN: It will help you to improve your physical health. It will help reduce feelings of depression. It will reduce feelings of anxiety and it will give your immune and cardiovascular system a boost. Putting these down and writing the benefits of what this can do besides what you're following through on.

KATHLEEN: This is huge. If you forget to say thank you for a day or two. It's ok. Don't beat yourself up. Pick up where you left off the next day. You can come back to it very easily. Like what I said with the happiness thing, have a stone in your pocket or crystal or something, oh I forgot.

KATHLEEN: I'm thankful for this. Gentle reminders will give you that opportunity. if somebody gave you a crystal or an item of jewelry or something and you're wearing it, you touch it and oh this is from so and so and you send good vibes to that person.

KATHLEEN: They're gonna feel that even if you're not saying anything to them. they're gonna feel it. That's what's cool about gratitude it is very much an energetic thing.

KATHLEEN: Another thing when you're doing gratitude, you're also practicing giving. You're giving of yourself. If you're around a difficult person and you're trying to hold the space, or you're showing kindness or love, even if they're upset, or somebody's grieving or in pain and you're there, if you don't say anything, your there holding a space for someone.

KATHLEEN: You're showing, you're giving to them and that's something to be grateful for. You have the ability to give to another human being in a time of trouble. How did it feel when you were in a difficult situation?

KATHLEEN: Somebody was there and they held a space for you and allowed you to be who you are? I know that when my mother passed away, a lot of people don't know how to deal with that. They don't know how to deal with someone who's grieving.

KATHLEEN: I know how to hold the space. Do I feel helpless? Totally. But you know it's not about me, it's about them. Sometimes they need somebody there to share what they're saying, to feel, to cry, whatever it is. They need to know that somebody is there besides them in their pain.

KATHLEEN: I found when I was on that side, most people couldn't handle it, they left. They left. They didn't know how to deal with me because I was always viewed as the rock of Gibraltar. I was crumbling because this was a new experience and I knew I would get through it and I knew I would get through it very quickly.

KATHLEEN: There's those emotions that come out of nowhere and then there were those handful of people that let me talk, they didn't say a word, they didn't do anything. They sat there and let me say what I needed to say or cry or whatever it was.

KATHLEEN: That was the greatest gift I ever received. When I look back on all the people I did this for, before I ever had that kind of grief, I am so grateful that I was able to do that for another human being. That is the greatest gift you can ever give anyone is being there for them. It's good times, bad times, anytime, being present in somebody else's life is huge.

KATHLEEN: We take so much of that for granted because we live in this crazy hectic life. My attitude is we need to be nice to people. We need to remember. Social media sometimes is a very destructive tool that we have.

KATHLEEN: There's a lot of benefits but people hide behind it where there's bullying and they can sit there and say, I don't believe in bullying and they're the ones doing all the bullying. You would never do some of this stuff in front of somebody's face.

KATHLEEN: When you're on social media and emails that we're doing, we're not in that connection. We're not reading somebody's energy to be able to write an email or try to be compassionate and loving in a social media context or through email, that's very challenging and difficult.

KATHLEEN: If you know how to master that, give yourself 10 pats on the back. When I have something to say, I try to be very conscious about how I'm presenting it and being in a different frame of mind. I'm not writing if you're angry, write the anger out and then write something constructive.

KATHLEEN: That's a tool we learn to develop. I'm grateful that I have learned to not be mean. It's mean, if I'm hurting. I get mean. I don't mean to be mean. I am. I have made progress. I step back and said, no, how would I want to receive this?

KATHLEEN: How can I make this constructive? When I talked to that animal hospital, I was talking to the office manager and she was telling me what she learned about what happened on Saturday.

KATHLEEN: I turned her around after a while. She really didn't get what happened. I said, I'm going to stop you right there and I'm going to tell you what happened on Saturday. I proceeded to tell her what happened. I targeted on the two people that were crazy and making me crazy. I said the doctor was great.

KATHLEEN: The guy who checked me out was great. I said, everybody's been really nice except for those two people. I said they stopped listening, they stopped hearing anything. I don't know what went on in their minds, but it was just not a good situation.

KATHLEEN: She gave me feedback that they work on helping their people and they have room for improvement now. As a business owner, I know I hate those phone calls and I love those phone calls at the same time because you don't know what's going on if somebody doesn't share it.

KATHLEEN: I wasn't being vindictive or angry. I was stressed out and I wanted her to understand that she needs to do something with those two women. What they do when there is a serious situation and they are very well aware you're in a hospital emergency room, with an animal, there are high emotions and you need to be good with that.

KATHLEEN: I was working my best. When I met her, I went in and I met her, we were like good people, good friends. I had no animosity. I had no anger. I had nothing because she and I were able to talk it out. That's because I wanted this to work out.

KATHLEEN: When you take something in that situation where you're moving in that direction to want to see the right outcome and a better outcome, that's what happens. This is what gratitude does. It makes you want to be better. Be constructive. I didn't want to destroy her or the clinic.

KATHLEEN: I wanted her to know that there was a problem. I'm grateful it was me. I could take it. Maybe that's why, It turned out good and I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to say something and I'm thankful that I wasn't angry and bitter and mean. I wanted to be constructive.

KATHLEEN: Those things are empowering. Those things are empowering because I had a voice. I got to say it and they listened. They wanted to be better and they wanted to make this situation right as well. That's a win-win and gratitude gives you many win-win opportunities.

KATHLEEN: I know that we're getting close to a commercial break. I have a meditation, a gratitude meditation that I want to share after we come back from our commercial break.

KATHLEEN: I'll finalize everything up with the nine steps, a quick nine step summary.

KATHLEEN: This is a gratitude meditation that I would like to give you. If you want to find a comfortable chair and sit in a quiet place, go ahead and close your eyes.

KATHLEEN: If you don't wanna close your eyes, feel free to have a soft gaze on the floor in front of you.

KATHLEEN: You wanna make your mind quiet and slowly start concentrating on your breathing.

KATHLEEN: You're gonna take in a deep breath using your nose, direct the air to your heart.

KATHLEEN: Now visualize your heart filled with a radiating soft and violet light.

KATHLEEN: As you take your deep breath, visualize the soft light in your heart changing to a pink color as it slowly combines with the violet light.

KATHLEEN: When you exhale, using your mouth, visualize a soft blue light moving away from the violet light and travel up through your body and out through your mouth.

KATHLEEN: Each time that you breathe in, say softly to yourself, I am full of gratitude.

KATHLEEN: And each time you breathe out, say I give my gratitude to the universe.

KATHLEEN: Repeat this cycle around 4 to 5 times and when you're ready, open your eyes.

KATHLEEN: With the practicing of gratitude, you have your gratitude journal, meditation. You do the meditation and doing this in the morning or right before you go to bed, either way would be really good for you. That way it's gonna create a good, positive feeling for your day and it's gonna relax you at night.

KATHLEEN: Once you're done with that, I would recommend that you write in your gratitude journal. you want to write that down if you had anything that came up for you in your meditation. Write that down in your gratitude journal as well because you're going to start seeing things, things will start coming up that maybe you'll see something a little differently. Answers may come by sitting, being quiet and still in a place of very strong positive vibrational energy.

KATHLEEN: There's a breathing focus that is another good one too. It doesn't matter how busy you are, you're always gonna find some time to where you can be grateful. To do this, you stop and focus your full attention on your breathing.

KATHLEEN: Notice every inhale and exhale that you make. Once you are focused on your breathing, say to yourself, thank you for my breath as an expression of gratitude, that you have for life, because you don't breathe yourself, something higher is breathing through you.

KATHLEEN: That in itself lets you know that you are a divine being. You want to do this at least once a day, a minimum of three times a week. This is a great way for you to remember who you are as well. That's why I always say I and the father are one. When I'm saying that, it's the same thing thank you for allowing me to live another day because none of us know how long we have.

KATHLEEN: You can also use visual and audio reminders for your gratitude as well. Like I said earlier, you can carry a crystal in your pocket or purse. Every time you see it, it can remind you to be grateful. You can put visual notes on your wall, use an alarm on your phone to remind you. You can create a visual schedule and, of course, find a partner that you can be grateful for where you guys remind each other.

KATHLEEN: You want to show gratitude towards your family. Instead of screaming and yelling at your kids, maybe find something more positive to say to where it's a positive influence instead of them being in trouble. Find other ways that might change, alter their person, not their personalities, but their behavior.

KATHLEEN: And of course, writing thank you notes is another way to let people know and express that.