The Gratitude Attitude

When I go back to Stephenville where I grew up, I like to walk along the beach and pick up rocks, as I collect my thoughts. One day I came across a small object that looked like a unique piece of pottery. I wasn’t sure what it was but I knew I had to find out. While I’d been walking on the beach, I’d been thinking of Dr. Wayne Dyer who had recently passed. I was saddened by his death. I’d learned so much from his books and recordings and now that I was in crisis, I longed to get his advice about my health and career. When I went to St. John’s later that month to see my doctor, I took the object I’d found on the beach with me to have it assessed. Someone had told me it looked like part of a dish from colonial times. Since I’d found it in an area where there had once been a settlement called Sandy Point—where my ancestors had lived—I decided to take the object to the museum to see if it had historical value. If so, I planned to donate it to their collection. The curator I needed to see wasn’t in, but she called me later that day, asking me to send pictures. I did and she called right away to tell me it was an old transformer. The minute I heard that word I knew that I had received a message from Dr. Wayne Dyer. The message was to transform my life. Follow my passion. Write my books. Help people move forward with their lives. I felt this message to “transform” was telling me I had to follow my heart and do what I’d been trying to do for so many years. What does this have to do with gratitude? When I had this breakthrough, I had been “gratituding” for a month, and I had done a 21-day gratitude meditation with Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. Things were opening up for me. I was seeing things that I might previously have ignored. I saw the transformer on a beach full of rocks. So much was happening and I couldn’t go back. I was transformed forever. Gratitude will do this. It will show you opportunities that you otherwise might have missed. It will allow you to see things in a different light. Move forward. Take a chance. I heard Dr. Dyer’s voice in my head. Transform, transform your life. Gratitude brings out the best in you, giving you a new appreciation for life and everything in it. Remember, no matter how low you go, you can always find your way back up. There are so many things in this life to be grateful for; you just have to look around. When you are feeling low and can’t seem to find something to be grateful for, shift your focus from what is wrong in your life to what is right. That’s what I needed to do. Focus on what is right. Take a few minutes each day to sit quietly and find the things that you’re grateful for. Start with the smallest things in life and you’ll be surprised at how your gratitude grows to encompass everything life has to offer. Think about what makes you who you are. Think about the things you love; the things that make you feel great. By doing this consistently, you will gain a whole new perspective. You will be transformed. You will develop the Gratitude Attitude. You won’t have to choose gratitude, because gratitude will choose you, and become a way of life. And then… Three years later I was on a plane flying home from Atlanta, Georgia. I had attended a pre-launch conference for a new company that I had joined recently. Its products were energetically changing people’s lives and mine included. I had been experiencing some issues with my knee for four months. The cartilage was torn and it was swollen and causing me great discomfort because of the amount of walking I had been doing in airports. As a I sat on the plane, I listened to an old podcast of Dr. Wayne Dyer. He mentioned how after people pass, they don’t go away. They are still here, just in a different form. It reminded of something I had read in a book about testing this theory by sending the person a message and waiting for their response. I had tried this theory out in the past. I was in a restaurant and I thought about my Mom and said to myself “if you can hear me show me a sign”. I waited and within a few minutes a woman walked into the restaurant with a blouse on just like one my Mom used to wear. Another time I was in church where I always felt my Dad near as he was a regular church goer and had a lot of faith. I remember feeling someone’s hands on my shoulders, I turned around thinking it was my brother Aaron as this was something he would likely do, but there wasn’t anyone there. I knew in my heart that it was my Dad. As I thanked him, I felt the weight of the hands on my shoulders lift. I started thinking, if my parents could prove this to me so could Dr. Wayne Dyer. He would do something dramatic if I asked him for a message, perhaps even bigger than the transformer. I recalled seeing the picture of a man’s face in the water. He had a big smile. The picture was taken while Dr. Dyer’s family dispersed his ashes into the water. As I listened to the podcast, I thought to myself, “Dr. Wayne Dyer, put your money where your mouth is; prove to me that you are still around.” I chuckled to myself and closed my eyes to relax. A few minutes later I felt a tap on my arm.