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Gratitude

My first principle is gratitude because for me, it’s the basis for everything in my life. That sense of deep appreciation, the deliberate choice to look for what I have to be grateful for, dominates my behavior. It’s even how I start my day.

From a very practical standpoint, I begin each day with a gratitude ritual. Let me first say I’ve never been a guy who could get into deep meditation. For some reason, it just doesn’t work for me. But I practice a daily habit in its place where I get up early because I like to watch the sun come up and make myself a nice espresso. Then I take a few deep breaths, which connects me and grounds me. And then I review my gratitudes.

Let me explain why I do this because I think this practice is one that will help anybody. One of the things I’ve learned about life is that you get what you look for; you get what you focus on. That starts by asking yourself meaningful questions. Think about it: the whole concept of thought is nothing more than a human being asking and answering their own questions. It flows from the fact that you are your own best audience if you’re asking great questions.

So I have learned one of the greatest questions to get your focus is to ask this very powerful, potent question: “What am I most grateful for?”

So I developed my morning gratitude ritual. I do it with a certain cadence. I use my life mastery wheel to look for different gratitudes every day in each of these six areas of my life:

• My emotions
• My health
• My relationships
• My spirituality
• My career
• My lifestyle

I’ll come back to this life wheel again and again throughout the book because it really is the foundation for complete life mastery.

Emotional Gratitude

I begin my ritual with what am I grateful for emotionally. I might say I’m grateful that I’m now at a place in my life to be able to choose my attitude. That means I can choose my belief system, and I can choose my core values; I no longer have to buy into somebody else’s. I’m grateful I can put myself in a good state of mind.

I’ve found this leads me to the three emotions I want use as my operating system throughout the course of the day: I want to be happy. I want to be kind to others. I want to see the world as abundant. Gratitude helps me bring those into focus.

When I’m grateful for where my state of mind is, I can use it as a very powerful tool for emotional fitness. It allows me to get into happiness, kindness, and abundance a lot quicker.

Being able to choose your emotions is powerful. And we know that not everyone believes they have the choice. A lot of people believe their attitude or emotions are dictated by whether it’s rainy or sunny out, whether they’ve got a million bucks in the bank, if a special person tells them they love them, or