APPRECIATION: an under-appreciated tool for creating your life

Photo of a water droplet reflecting the sky & earth around it, in reverse, from Louis Maniquet on Unsplash

​It’s American Thanksgiving time again, when people in the U.S. are urged from all directions to be grateful. And the gratitude craze isn’t all-American: especially in spiritual circles, it covers the globe.

I’m not (entirely) against gratitude, but I have written before about the potentially more solid and powerful aspect of appreciation, as compared to gratitude (which may have stickier components, like that of needing to put out I’m-so-grateful to deserve good things coming your way).

In this writing, I’d like to explore the POWER of appreciation in your process of creating your life.

As you look around you and observe your life from eagle view, or take in this one moment, appreciation is always available.

It’s an option. It’s a choice.

It’s worth reaching for, because what you appreciate really does nourish your total well-being. It feels good to appreciate. You feel good about what you behold when you appreciate it. You set yourself up for feeling more goodness, and hope expands, and your sense that your life is worth showing up for expands.

So then your sense of can-do expands. Your ability to take the next step with ease expands. With appreciation in the fore, you may find yourself more energized and clear in creating your life.

Everything expands as you give it your appreciation. It gets better and feels nicer and turns its best face your way. So …

• Appreciate your home
• Appreciate what transports you
• Appreciate this body you’re in, that is both home and transport
• Appreciate what and how much you can do
• Appreciate your work
• Appreciate your people
• Appreciate random people you cross paths with
• Appreciate what you have access to because of where you live
• Appreciate the animals you get to encounter or interact with
• Appreciate Mother Earth, and her trees & stones & water
• Appreciate the weather

​That’s a good one to stop on (the list could go on and on, obviously). It’s a good one because we’re BOTHERED by the weather these days. It can disturb us.

But note that anything else on the list can go off-kilter! Things (people, places) go wrong or get wacky all the time. It’s all in progress and impermanent, either breaking down or growing & improving.

So something not wanted or not to your liking can be found in most anything most anytime.

These somethings can, could, and do easily make you feel bad, if you let them. They stir up dissatisfaction (and maybe a sense that you're not okay, and then maybe a fear you’ll never be okay). …

Think in terms of where you put your FOCUS.

In any life, any scene, any moment, there’s wanted and unwanted. (That’s Abraham-Hicks language again.) There’s always stuff to appreciate with every fiber of your being, and stuff to bellyache about.

Which will you focus on?

It’s up to you what you animate and fuel and expand with speech and thought and strong emotion.

When you offer & feel appreciation (especially with every fiber of your being), you energize your own being and your very sense of well-being. You also declare and establish that this stuff you’re appreciating is what most matters to you, what’s predominant for you.

And that predisposes you to notice more of it, to make much of it, to lean into all that you appreciate that’s right here, already in place in this imperfect moment & reality.

Thus, you expand and you create more of what’s wanted. By choosing appreciation, you consciously create your life, the life you want.

Call it self-fulfilling prophecy, call it Law of Attraction, call it basic common sense: there it is any way you slice it.

Love & blessings, Jaya