More on Being Thankful

Hey Occulties,

I know I had recently posted that the problem with most prayers “failing” was that people often express little or no gratitude towards the very beings they make requests of. This weekend, a frustrated reader expressed to me that she would gladly give thanks and praise, but she couldn’t think of anything good in her life, so she couldn’t be thankful. 

*Sigh

Right now, to read this article, you must have wifi access and/or access to the internet. You also have a computer, smartphone, and/or tablet with which to access the internet. Even if you are using someone else’s device and internet, you have access to those things. That is something to be thankful for.

Do you have food? Heat? Air Conditioning? A home or apartment you can live in? How is your health? Does anyone love you – your parents, friends, pets, family? If you said yes to any of that or are enjoying good health, be thankful for that.

Even the most miserable person I have worked for had plenty to be grateful for, but because all they did was focus on what they didn’t have or what they didn’t like, they took for granted all of the blessings surrounding them. Furthermore, this willful blindness towards anything NOT upsetting them actually amplifies their suffering. 

You don’t need to be so miserable. Shifting your focus to your blessings – that is, the things in your life that are really good and that you likely take for granted, – is going to take away so much of the pain and distress you feel from over-focusing on the negative things you wish to change. You don’t even need to be a spiritual person and thank a spirit or supernatural being – just say to yourself a list of things you are thankful that you do have at least once a day.

The reward is that you stop feeling so miserable. Not surprisingly, if you stop fixating on a problem or situation and overthinking it, and put focus on the good things in your life, you actually feel better and are in a far-better frame of mind to tackle that stinky problem or situation. It might not be instant (just acknowledging things which make your life better, that your survival needs are met, and that you have some stuff that even makes you happy just the once won’t do much,) but if you even take TEN consecutive days where once a day you either just give thanks to God/dess, spirits, the universe OR even just read aloud to yourself a list of things you’re grateful you have, and I promise you, you’ll start to feel better.

As an added benefit, if you’re thanking the Almighty or a spirit for those things without asking for anything for ten straight days, you’re building a relationship with that being so that when you do ask for something, you’re more likely to get your prayers answered with yes (though I would hope the thanks and praise you give to another being is sincere…because spirits and God/Creator/Almighty know when you’re insincere.)

I understand how easy it is to slide into negative thinking. I have had instances where I found myself stuck in a rut, and it felt like everything was just more dreadful bullshit everywhere I turned…and by shifting my focus to the good things I did have, I managed to pull myself out of my funk. Spellcasting to fix the situation causing my distress certainly helped, but keep in mind, to let the spell really help the situation, I couldn’t think the situation to death (lust for results), so counting my blessings and focusing on the positive things in my life also helped my spellwork to do it’s job.

Hopefully this was enlightening. 😉 I would like to focus more on traditional topics like money spellwork and cursing and love magic in my next posts. But after being told by someone with good looks, a good job, a nice home, and in perfect health that they had nothing to be happy about, I really just had to write this article. 

So don’t forget – you have good stuff in your life. As they saying goes, “if you only focus on what you don’t have, you just miss out on the things you do have.”

~Cat