I remember that my grandmother used to tell us constantly: “Be thankful for what you have.”
I never really payed most attention to it, because I didn’t or couldn’t understand why I needed to be thankful when things in our life were not so good. I mean, we didn’t have any money or food and sometimes the only thing that we could eat was carrots mixed with water, and if we were lucky, we would add a little sugar to it, in order to give it a little flavor.
So, no, I couldn’t be thankful for situations like that because I could see how some neighbors and many people around us had nice meals to eat and most of the time, they were not even nice people.
Funny part though, I didn’t know that my own ungratefulness was the cost of our lack on food, money, toys and pretty much anything I had desires for.
I was truly jealous of people that had more than we did, I would be so upset by just looking at them, feeling like it was so unfair and that we were definitely hopeless. Once again, being very, or I should say, being extremely ungrateful for what I didn’t have in my life, creating more of what I didn’t want.
I don’t think that being raised as catholic helped me much. I am saying this because, somehow, at a very young age, I knew this religion was not making much sense to me. I personally couldn’t understand how the repetition of things was doing anything in anyone’s life at all.
Every Sunday morning, we were forced to dress up and go to a cold place full of people that would literally, criticize each other instead of paying attention to what the priest was saying. Even though, the priest always said the same things every single Sunday, so I guess, it is a little understandable why everyone was bored, and the only thing they could do was to talk or criticize everyone else, including the priest, while being in church.
My mother and grandmother also taught us, or reinforced us, to pray “The Lord’s Prayer” every single night, that it too, was a very simple repetition of a very long paragraph. I felt like by doing that I was literally just wasting few more seconds of sleep.
One day, for some, “strange” reason, I decided to be thankful for every single thing I did, had received or experienced that day. It felt so good that I literally could go to sleep with a huge smile in my face and I could even feel a strong energy or emotion of love in the center of my chest…. I wish I would have paid more attention to it, to have made it stronger, but I didn’t. In other words, I wish I would have been more aware of what it was happening, because it was definitely changing my life for the best.
I remember that I was definitely feeling better about things and life in general, but somehow, I managed to go back to my old habits of negativity and depression, and completely stopped beingthankful, making my life more difficult than it should have been, allowing to create a cycle of more pain, frustrations and situations that were not so easy to deal with.
I am glad though, that somehow, and for a very beautiful reason, I had the ability to think of something and make it come true in my life, sometimes in seconds. At that time though, my thoughts were not so positive, so a lot of the times a not so positive thought would cross my mind and seconds later, it would happen. It did scare me so much that, somehow, I tried to avoid it at all cost.
However, I got used to pay attention to my thoughts, and when I noticed that I had a not so positive thought, I would say, out load: “God forbid it.” For some reason, every time I did say that, nothing would happen. So, I learned to trust that sentence and would use it constantly. But, when I wouldn’t say anything, whatever I had thought at that moment was manifested in my reality in an instant, making me even more scared of it.
Again, at that time I was not aware of what was happening, but somehow, it was happening. Now days I know with certainty that all this is truly possible, not only with not so positive things, but also with things we so desire in our lives. And, now I know that, it is our positivism and love towards things we desire that makes things appear in our lives like magic. But just like positivism and gratitude can make things appear, so does fear and negativity.
So, I could say that, in a way, I really had a very interesting life full of many ups and downs, and to be honest with you, it felt more downs than ups. At least that is how I felt for so many years, because if you ask me right now, I would totally say that I had more ups than downs in my life. In reality, we all do, but it is our perspective towards people and situations that allows us to see one thing being more prominent or stronger than the other one.
Ok so, why the need to be grateful? Does being grateful really changes your life? I can say with plenty of certainty that Yes it does. How so?
Well, after many years of pain, negativity, anger and frustrations, I finally discovered that my happiest moments were the ones I had been grateful the most. If you go to the Manifestation Page, you would see that all of the manifestations were created only after being thankful for something it had not even been a reality yet.
Later on, I discovered that being thankful is the most powerful prayer ever. When we begged God for help because we are desperate, frustrated or just sad, we don’t get as fast results as being thankful for something we desire so much, something like health when we don’t have it or money when we don’t have it.
For example, it would be better to say: “Thank you God for allowing me to be so healthy (even if I am really sick)” than saying: “God please help me with this illness, make it go away, don’t let me die or get worse” but I have to say that the sentence above is still better than saying: “I hate being sick, why are you punishing me God? What have I done to deserve this?”
If you could truly see what those sentences above would look like if we were able to put in a more physical perspective, one that we can see, then you would definitely see that words are very powerful, especially when your feelings or emotions towards those words are very strong and clear.
To prove this, Dr. Emoto studied water for more than 20 years and he too discovered the importance and beauty of the positive as well as the negative words, such as “Thank you” and “I Hate you.”
He found that it was very important to know how the water has a secret within it, and that it is very important to be careful or aware of how we talk to each other, specially kids, since we are 75% water and kids 80% to 90% water (The older we get, the less water we have) When I tried his experiment, I was very amazed at how my life had been molded according to my thoughts, words, and mostly my feelings.
One day, after a lot of internal work within myself, (which I would talk a little more in another time or maybe in a book) I decided to do the experiment that Dr. Emoto had created to show humanity the importance not only of positive words and feelings, but also the importance of water and how you can change your life in a very beautiful but kind of simple and easy way by just being happy and positive most of the time. Like Abraham Hicks says: “You need to be happy in order to find happiness.”
I know this doesn’t make much sense, but trust me, that the only times I was truly happy was when I was already happy, or at least, when I already had an emotion of comfort and ease. The key to this process though is to try and be positive or thankful for at least 22 days, because just like your body needs 22 days of work out to get used to it, and see physical results, your brain, and more specific your neurons, also need 22 days to really grasp the concept of positivism and thankfulness.
After 22 days, every single cell of your body would feel positive and thankful for a lot of things, you wouldn’t even need to think about it, you would just naturally do it. The reason why we don’t see many results when trying something new, is because we do try for maybe a couple of weeks or sometimes just a couple of days and because we do not see any immediate change or result, then we believe this stuff does not work for us; that this is not real; that it is just a joke, and so we go back to our old believes and we stop trying completely, going back to our old habits.
I would recommend you take a look at Dr. Joe Dispenza for more detail information and practices about how our brain, neurons, thoughts and feelings work together in order to help us create a different life or reality with many mystical experiences.
Dr. Emoto created an exercise that helps everyone, see clearly, how our emotions do affect our reality. This exercise involves white rice, water, and a couple of jars with the lids. Here is how my experiment with the water and rice worked:
In a way, this exercise helped me see that, first, I can change the Ph of the water with my thoughts and feelings, second, that I can create my own reality, third but not least, that this is avery healthy way to let out my emotions, specially my not so positive emotions without hurting the people than matters the most to me.
On my first exercise, I used two small jars, both of them had the same amount of rice and the same amount of water, then I would put the jar lids on and put them in a place where they both would get the same amount of light and darkness. This is so you don’t think or say that the environment is the cause of the change. I put them apart from each other about one foot, the only difference between the two jars, is that one would have a little sticker (you can also use a marker) that says, either, I love you, thank you, or any positive word and the other one would have another sticker with any negative word such as stupid, idiot, or I hate you. In my case, I used the words “thank you” and “I hate you.”
I was supposed to hold each jar for two minutes every day and while holding them, I would have the feelings of thankfulness or hate and send them mentally and emotionally to the corresponding jar. Of course, I couldn’t or didn’t really have those feelings while holding those jars, who does, really? I couldn’t understand how to find those feelings towards something I thought had no life. To me, the jar with the water and rice was just something material and nothing else. No one ever teaches us or tell us to give or have feelings for material things, right?
So, I decided that for whatever reasons every time I was feeling really happy, I would hold the jar that said: “Thank you” and when I was super upset at something or someone, or if I had had a very hard day, I would hold the jar that said: “I hate you;” since the feelings were already there and were so strong, the exercise became really easy to do.
In less than a month, I did notice many things:
First, the jar with the word “thank you” had turned yellow and the smell was nice and soft. The rice was actually fermenting. On the other hand, the jar with the word “I hate you” didn’t change at all, the water was clear, maybe a tiny bit whiter, but the rice was completely white, like nothing had happened to it. But, when I opened the jar with the word “I hate you” to smell it, my daughter and I almost past out because the smell was so strong and literally horrible.
I could see that my feelings had an effect not only on water but also on apparently material things as well. The changes on the color of the water and the rice depend on the strength of the person’s feelings while doing the exercise. I have known people that have turned the water and rice with the word “I hate you” completely black. If this happens to anyone out there, I would definitely recommend to please not feel ashamed or bad about it, otherwise, you would just be adding to the feeling that is not so positive and you would definitely feel worse.
Second, I also noticed that every time I was super upset at someone or something, instead of getting my frustration out on that person, situation or thing, I would get it out on the jar with the word “I hate you,” but as soon as I would put the jar down, I would literally feel relaxed, calmed and without any anger at all towards anything or anyone; it was amazing.
Third, I realized that I could tremendously affect my environment not only with my thoughts, but also with my feelings. I understood that I had control over my own reality, not only with people, but also with material things and situations.
2 small jars (3 if you want to see what happens when you ignore it, for this, you don’t put any word, you just simply ignore it for the same amount of time that you will be working on the positive word and negative word)
¼ cup of water
¼ cup of white rice (cooked or uncooked) if you decide to do the exercise with cooked rice, then you don’t need to add water after you put it in the jar
Stickers to write the words or you can just use a marker and write on the bottle itself
Your positive feelings
Your not so positive feelings
Remember to put them in the same place but a foot apart from each other. Every day, grab them and send the according feeling to each one.
Have fun with it and if you want, send me your story of what you had experienced, any feedback or any questions you have about all this process.
I am attaching few videos of people, that have done this same exercise getting some amazing results. Not everyone does it the same way, so please feel free to choose one that works best for you.
Here is another link to a longer explanation about water and the importance of feelings and positive words