Appreciation- short cut to feeling good.

I think a good first post is to talk about appreciation. Appreciation is a family affair for nothing will take you faster from being Connected to your spirit than appreciating something for any moment in time. It’s important to teach our children about appreciating things in their lives, just as it’s important for us as parents to appreciate in order to raise our feeling space and get connected. (Connected is another word for what Abraham would call being in the vortex, it is when you are keeping up with all you really are.)

Appreciation is slightly different from Gratitude. I say slightly different, but that difference makes all the difference. When you think of those two words you will notice that Gratitude feels like thanks to someone, there’s an element of being indebted to someone or something else, while Appreciation sweeps over you as a feeling of blissful surrender.
I’ve taught both gratitude and appreciation to our children. When they were small I told them to start saying “Thank you God’s” at night before sleep. It worked wonderfully for awhile, but I soon noticed that the words became static. “Thank you God for my family, thank you God for my cat, Thank you God for my bed….etc.” The list seemed to grow and grow as they looked for more things to be thankful for, but the feeling of thankfulness seemed to diminish before the end of the first week. Now I’m not saying that its not important to be Thankful, but God doesn’t need words, rather it works on feelings, or vibrations, and that’s where appreciation comes in. Appreciation can be focused on one thing, even the smallest thing, and when we put our focus on it, the feeling grows and grows to the point of overtaking us.
Like I said, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Sometimes the smallest thing works the best. For instance, I LOVE to appreciate that first sip of my morning tea. I savour it, roll it around my mouth and truly let it be tasted down to my toes. I have a tree that’s outside our bedroom window, I appreciate it every morning as the wind rustles its leaves. I appreciate my children’s laughter as I hear them playing together in the next room.

I was watching our son today and actually appreciated the way he appreciated! He’s 15 months, and as someone who is usually connected, with occasional disconnected moments (the screams, the tantrums, the fits when he’s disconnected!) he lives in a state of appreciation. He savours every bottle cap, thrills at every taste of ice cream, nothing goes taken for granted. What an example. His connection to his spirit is amplified by every moment of appreciation. Surely that’s what it’s meant to be like. Connected… amplified, connected amplified. As he grows he’ll have more moments of disconnection, but I will always be able to ask him to appreciate something, to draw him back to that wonder. That is something to appreciate too.

So from now on I tell our daughters to appreciate fully. On an off day, I ask them to pick one thing, even a toy, their bed, their pillow... anything. Sometimes they let it flow over them and their day is turned on again. Its a tool, hopefully one that will last them the rest of their lives.