Gratitude is one of the most important things in manifesting. It has an almost healing influence on the mind, and it opens your life to an inflow of good and desirable manifestations.
In this article, we will look at what gratitude is, why it’s important in manifesting, how it works on the subconscious mind, and then I will give you a practical guide for how to ”use” gratitude to your advantage.
What Is Gratitude
Gratitude is, in its essence, a heartfelt acknowledgment and appreciation of the good aspects of your life. It is about recognizing the value of life and of finding meaning even in the smallest of things.
Rather than being shallow and ”on the surface,” gratitude often touches the depths of your being and puts you in a joyous mental state. It has a strong effect on your thoughts, feelings, perspective, behavior, and overall well-being, as well as the results you attain in the external world.
It has a healing effect in that it casts out toxic emotions such as hate, sadness, and anger. It’s impossible to hold two thoughts at the same time, so you cannot be grateful and extremely angry at the same time.
In short, gratitude is a deep-rooted sense of appreciation that arises from seeing the goodness in your life, and it plays a key role in manifesting, which we will talk about next.
Benefits Of Gratitude – Why It’s Important
1: How Gratitude Improves Mental Health
Gratitude is shown to have a great effect on a person’s mental health and overall well-being. By focusing on the positive aspects of your life and acknowledging the good that surrounds you, you develop a sense of appreciation and thankfulness.
Gratitude can help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression; it casts out toxic emotions and replaces them with good ones.
Even if it played no role in manifesting, this would be reason enough for incorporating more gratitude into your daily life.
2: How Gratitude Will Help Manifesting
In my opinion, gratitude is probably one of the most important things you can begin to do in your manifesting journey. Gratitude implies something to be grateful for, and you, therefore, open the floodgates of the good in life by being grateful.
First of all, gratitude will help you manifest any particular desire you want, such as manifesting a specific person or becoming financially independent.
Cultivating a feeling of gratitude in association with a particular desire (more on this later) will aid in the manifestation of that desire due to the receptive nature of gratitude. As an illustration, you could think of gratitude as fertile soil and your desires as the seeds steadily growing as a result of being planted in that soil.
Secondly, simply embodying an attitude of gratitude will also cause your life to get better in general. If your overall state of consciousness is one of gratitude, then it follows that all your manifestations will begin to align with this state of gratitude.
So, the reason gratitude is so effective is that it impresses the subconscious mind and therefore changes your state of consciousness.
This new state of consciousness will both cause continual improvement in all areas of your life, including aspects you may not have even thought of, and it will also make it easier for you to consciously manifest any particular desire you may have.
In fact, simply just cultivating gratitude can manifest your desire without you even trying to manifest them in the first place.
The point is, do not avoid gratitude! It is more important than you may think.
Technique 1: Acknowledge What You’re Grateful For
This is the first of two techniques in this article. This is sort of a preliminary exercise for the second technique, but it’s still very important.
To develop an attitude of gratitude, think about all the things that you’re grateful for. In the hassle and stress of our daily lives, we usually forget how many things we actually have going for us for the simple reason that we are taking them for granted.
Taking a moment to acknowledge and appreciate these things will evoke the gratitude you have toward them. A good way is to write them out on a ”gratitude list.” Here is an example:
- I am grateful for my good health, which allows me to enjoy life and participate in activities I love.
- I am grateful for my family and friends who support me and care about my well-being.
- I am grateful for my home, which provides me with shelter, comfort, and a sense of belonging.
- I am grateful for the technology that connects me with others and makes my life more convenient.
- And so on…
Make them personal to you. You should truly be grateful for them. Acknowledging what you are grateful for in this manner will increasingly build a happier, more joyous mental state.
Now, acknowledgment goes beyond merely writing a list of current things you’re grateful for. When someone does something for you, or someone is kind to you, acknowledge their kindness and actually feel thankful for them doing it.
The point of all this is to change your perspective and make you more of a grateful and thankful person in general. Gratitude casts out toxic emotions such as anger, despair, and hopelessness. Sure, all these ”bad” emotions have their place, but most often, they are running wild and destroying all the good things in your mind.
Doing these exercises are a good preliminary exercise for getting the gratitude wheels going. And, as said, changing your state of consciousness, even the slightest, will automatically cause new results in your life.
Later on in this article, I will give you an even more powerful technique that will allow you to impress gratitude deeply within your mind, which can produce really big changes in your life.
Gratitude Implies Receiving
An important thing about gratitude or thankfulness is that it implies receiving something good. When someone gives you a gift or does something kind to you, you naturally feel grateful.
When your subconscious state of consciousness is permeated by a sense of gratitude, you will naturally receive manifestations that evoke a sense of thankfulness or gratitude within you. Gratitude manifests as things to be grateful for. As you become more grateful, you manifest even more and better things to be grateful for.
Gratitude basically opens you up to the receival of all the good things life has to offer. If the gates of life opened up to you and gave you everything you’ve ever wanted, you would obviously feel a deep and profound sense of gratitude toward life.
Self-Reinforcement of Gratitude
Gratitude is self-reinforcing. As you begin to let gratitude permeate your being, you will begin to manifest more things the reinforce your gratitude.
You are effectively establishing a positive feedback loop. As your state of consciousness improves, corresponding things manifest, thus reinforcing and confirming the validity of that state of consciousness.
As your state of consciousness improves even more, new and better manifestations occur, again reinforcing the new state.
The self-reinforcement of gratitude can be broken down into three key stages:
- Cultivating Gratitude: The first step is to consciously focus on the things you are grateful for in your life. This can be done by beginning to notice and appreciate the good things in your life.
It can also be done by going into meditation and impressing a sense of gratitude in the subconscious mind (which we will look at in the second technique). - Manifesting More Things To Be Grateful For: As you embody the feeling of gratitude, effectively changing your state of consciousness, new manifestations occur in the form of experiences, people, and opportunities corresponding to that grateful mindset. In other words, by being grateful for what you already have, you open yourself to receiving the goodness of life.
- Reinforcing Gratitude: As new manifestations begin to appear in your life, you have even more reason to be grateful.
This continued recognition of your blessings further reinforces your gratitude, creating a positive feedback loop.
The more you appreciate and give thanks for the good things in you have, the more you create additional experiences to be grateful for, thus perpetuating the cycle of gratitude and corresponding, prosperous manifestations.
Implanting Gratitude In Your Subconscious Mind
We have now talked about why it’s important to be more grateful during your daily life; it will get the gratitude snowball rolling, and it will definitely cause some improvement both in your own individual thoughts and behavior and in your external circumstances.
However, this approach may not always have a deep and lasting impact on your results. It is very reliant on you constantly directing your attention and monitoring your feelings.
Let’s now talk about the importance of going deep within (like in meditation), where you can use gratitude to initiate big changes in your subconscious mind.
To make this clearer, let me briefly go over the conscious and the subconscious mind.
The conscious mind is the ”little” you. This is where you have your individual willpower, and it’s the surface level of your mind. It is the you that you think you are.
The subconscious mind is the deeper ”self.” It can almost feel like a separate entity within you, but it’s your awareness, your true self. This is the power you are working with when manifesting.
The key point to remember is that the conscious mind is at mercy to the ideas in the subconscious mind. You cannot really act in opposition to an idea held in the subconscious, no matter how much willpower you use. The only way to get new results is by changing the ideas in the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind will automatically take a new idea and, in its own way and by its own power, realize that idea both as the results you get in the external world and in your own behavior and mental state.
So, how does this connect with gratitude? From this, it becomes clear that, for gratitude to be effective, we need it to affect the subconscious mind. This is best done in meditation.
When you go into meditation, you have clearer access to the subconscious mind. You have bypassed the critical analytical factor, and you now have free access to give suggestions to the subconscious mind.
In this state, embody the feeling of gratitude (I will explain this later). This will improve the ”soil” of your psyche, or, in other words, it will reprogram the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind, having incorporated the new-found gratitude, will begin to realize/manifest it in every aspect of your being. Your life will begin to align with the gratitude you have imagined, and most of the time, the results will come independently of your will and without you being aware of what is going on.
I will explain how to do this in the technique below.
Technique 2: Manifesting With The Feeling Of Gratitude And Meditation
I want to give you a practical guide on how you can par meditation and gratitude. Meditation, or a relaxed state of consciousness, gives you clear access to the subconscious mind, and the almost healing influences of gratitude can produce big changes in the subconscious environment. Big changes in the subconscious means big changes in what is manifested.
In this technique, gratitude will be used for manifesting general improvement in your life, but it can very easily be adjusted if you want to manifest a specific outcome.
- Go Into Meditation: Sit or lay down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and withdraw your attention from without. You can use any meditation practice you want – like progressive muscle relaxation, for example. A slight degree of meditation is better than nothing, but generally speaking, the deeper, the better.
Let yourself be without any judgment. The point of this is to come in contact with your awareness, which is your subconscious mind. Understand the subconscious mind is already there; to see it, you simply quiet the noise of your conscious mind. - Evoke The Feeling Of Gratitude: Now that you’re in a relaxed mental state, you have clear access to the subconscious.
To evoke the feeling of gratitude, you can think of something or someone that makes you grateful, say affirmations such as ”I am grateful” or ”thank you, thank you, thank you,” or you can even visualize pleasant imagery.
Let the feeling of gratitude occur; do not force it. It’s okay if the magnitude of the gratitude is subtle; it doesn’t have to be an overwhelming emotion. - Immerse Yourself In The Feeling Of Gratitude: Focus your attention on gratitude. Again, it will still work even if the feeling of gratitude is minuscule. You must put your attention on the thought to the exclusion of all other thoughts, almost like you are getting lost within it.
- (Optional) Affirm that this is now a part of you. Once you have dwelled in that feeling for a while, declare to the subconscious mind that this gratitude is now a deep part of your being and that it should build up corresponding results in your mental sphere and in the external world.
This is simply just a way to hammer the nail an extra time.
The technique is pretty simple. The subconscious mind having undertaken this new state of gratitude, will begin to produce corresponding changes both in the external world and in yourself, without you having to act or do anything other than what you feel compelled or inspired to do.
Incorporating The Feeling of Gratitude When Manifesting
Let’s now talk about the role of gratitude when manifesting something specific. Maybe you want to be in a relationship; maybe you want more money; maybe you want a certain event to occur.
Whatever it may be you want to manifest, the process is always the same; convey to the subconscious mind what you want it to do, and this is usually done through visualizing or affirming of some sort.
So, how do you incorporate gratitude? Well, it’s pretty simple; you simply feel grateful for the fact that your desire is already accomplished (or is certain to be accomplished, at least).
To make this clear, let me give you some examples.
Using Gratitude When Visualizing
Visualize a mental scene where you are already in possession of your desire (I explain this in my article on visualization). It’s best if the scene takes place AFTER the desire has been accomplished so that the end is clearly established.
The scene has to be relevant to your desire. For example, if you wanted to be in a relationship, a scene could be where you have just received a text from your partner.
Feel yourself into the reality of the scene. Immerse yourself; use all your senses. Do NOT use effort to hold your mental imagery in place. If the imagery is blurry, that’s fine. Simply just pretend that it is real – just don’t use effort!
Ideally, you should think and act exactly as if the scene were actually happening. In some instances, it can actually feel like you are actually there as if you have traveled to another place, and perhaps, this is what is really happening. However, you don’t need to do this perfectly at all; a ”mediocre” visualization session can still be very impactful, so do not condemn it.
So where does gratitude come in? In the scene, feel grateful for the fact that you are now in a happy relationship. How you go about it is up to you. In your scene, you might think to yourself, ”Thank you,” or ”I am so happy that this happened.” If you want, you can also say ”thank you” to ”life,” ”the universe,” ”the subconscious,” or whatever you call the inner power.
The important thing is to permeate the scene with gratitude. As we looked at earlier, gratitude has a great effect on the subconscious mind.
Gratitude enables you to hold or immerse yourself in your desire without contrary thoughts going in the way. This is because you can only really hold on to the ought at a time, and as you hold on to the gratitude, you necessarily cast out any thought that opposes it.
Using Gratitude When Affirming
Ideally, you should first go into a relaxed state of consciousness, where you’ve closed your eyes and relaxed your body before you start affirming (I explain this in my article on affirmations).
When in this state, begin saying affirmations that align with your desire. If you want to have a better social life, say affirmations such as, ”I have an open and inviting personality,” ”I have a great social life,” or whatever affirmations that you feel will do the trick.
Say these affirmations, and then feel grateful for the fact they will be accomplished or for the fact that they have already been accomplished. Again, the important thing is to permeate your mind with the feeling of gratitude, partially because it allows you to hold the thought to the exclusion of all others.
Affirmations can also be used to evoke the gratitude, so you might prefer to add ”I am grateful for the fact that…” in front of your initial affirmation. You can also just repeatedly affirm ”thank you” or ”I am grateful,” evoking the feeling of gratitude, which you can then combine with the affirmations of your desire.
Summary
Gratitude is one of the most powerful things you can incorporate when manifesting. There are many reasons for this, but the primary ones are 1) that it allows you to immerse yourself in a certain thought while excluding all others and 2) that it opens you to receive the good things in life and the things that you deeply desire.
Begin incorporating the feeling of gratitude into your daily life. It will not only improve your mood but also give you a better overall perception of the world and how you choose to act.
In terms of manifesting big, external changes, I recommend you first go into a meditative state of consciousness, as this gives you a clearer path to the subconscious mind.
When you are “in there,” visualize or affirm with a sense of gratitude or simply just embody the feeling of gratitude.
You can use gratitude for general improvement or for a specific goal you have in mind.
Gratitude has a strong effect on the subconscious, and the subconscious, having incorporated a state of gratitude, will begin to produce corresponding manifestations in your external world, in your mind, and in your behavior, oftentimes without you even realizing it.
I highly recommend that you do not pass off gratitude as something optional but that you at least incorporate at least a little in your manifesting practices.
Anyway, I hope you found this article helpful. Thanks for reading!
