When practising gratitude, imagine how different your life would be without that particular thing you’re showing thanks for. It will produce strong feelings and emotions. And this is how you can get into a powerful state of gratitude. Remember, there might be many things in your world that are going wrong. Yet there are also many things that are going right.

To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude.

The more you recognize and express gratitude for the things you have, the more things you will have to express gratitude for.

Being grateful does not mean that everything is necessarily good. It just means that you can accept it as a gift.

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

I believe every day should begin and end with gratitude. I practice it every day in my morning meditation. Each morning, focusing on the reverse gap, I think of five things I’m grateful for in my personal life. Then I think of five things I’m grateful for in my work and career. A typical list might look like this: PERSONAL LIFE 1.​My daughter, Eve, and her beautiful smiles 2.​The happiness I felt last night relaxing with a glass of red wine and watching Sherlock on BBC 3.​My wife and life partner 4.​The time I spent with my son building his newest Lego Star Wars creation 5.​The wonderful cup of gourmet coffee my publicist, Tania, left on my desk WORK LIFE 1.​My leadership team and the amazing talent they bring to our company 2.​A particularly great letter we received for my online course Consciousness Engineering 3.​The incredibly fun Culture Day we had in the office yesterday 4.​The fact that plans are coming together to hold our upcoming A-Fest at another amazing location 5.​Having coworkers who are friends and who greet me with hugs when I come to the office This entire practice takes me no more than ninety seconds. But it’s perhaps one of the most important and powerful ninety seconds I can spend each day.

And gratitude is the solution. Being grateful for what we have today doesn’t mean we have to have that forever. It means we acknowledge that what we have today is what we’re supposed to have today. There is enough, we’re enough, and all we need will come to us. We don’t have to be desperate, fearful, jealous, resentful, or miserly. We don’t have to worry about what someone else has; they don’t have ours. All we need to do is appreciate and take care of what we have today. The trick is, we need to be grateful first — before we get anything else, not afterward.

When you are consistently in a state of gratitude, and aware of all the awesomeness that already exists, it, among many other things, makes it much easier for you to believe that there’s more awesomeness where that came from, and that this yet-to-be-manifested awesomeness is also available to you. You’ve received awesomeness before, so of course, you can receive awesomeness again. This is how gratitude strengthens your faith. And having strong faith is a major key in transforming your life.

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.

To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds.

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more.

Times that challenge us physically, emotionally, and spiritually may make it almost impossible for us to feel grateful. Yet, we can decide to live gratefully, courageously open to life in all its fullness. By living in a gratefulness that we don’t feel, we begin to feel the gratefulness we live.

There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you're grateful, you're not fearful, and if you're not fearful, you're not violent. If you're grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live.