This is simple and yet amazingly powerful. You can take command of your own level of happiness.

This works even if you do it silently. You can look at a delivery truck and feel gratitude for how that truck is bringing food to your favorite store. You can look at a safety patrol worker and feel gratitude for how they are protecting our youth.

There is no end to opportunities for feeling grateful.

One thing I do frequently is write statements of gratitude as part of the twenty minute bliss exercises. This routine always raises my mood – often dramatically.

So why not take command of your own level of happiness? This is the perfect day for it.

May the bliss be with you.

With gratitude,
Jim Kitzmiller

I’m grateful to God for the means to help people experience life in a happier way. And I’m grateful to you for the wonderful feedback. Thank you so much.

The other day I went into my favorite coffee shop and bought just a cup of coffee. This happened to be the wonderful situation of being the right person in the right place at the right time.

The cashier gave me two souffles. They had apparently reached their expiration time. They would either wind up in the garbage or my stomach. My stomach was the winner. As always I radiated gratitude and thanked my new friend.

This happened again the following morning.

The third morning I stood in line for the cashier so I could place my coffee order. My friend filled a tray with two souffles, a coffee cup, and handed it to me while I was in line.

My response was a heartfelt thank you. But it also contained a feeling of guilt.

“Who am I to receive all these goodies without paying money?” The guilt feeling was very strong. It accompanied me to my usual booth where I sat down with my writing device.

Fortunately I knew how to let go of things. So I spent a good part of the day letting go.

Then I was wondering if these gifts came because of the way I looked. Depending on your viewpoint you might think that I looked like a homeless person, a mountain man, or a guru. So I got a haircut and a beard trim.

When I came today my friend didn’t say anything about the new look. But she still gave me two free souffles.

The gift gave me the opportunity to demonstrate the amazing scope of gratitude, blessings, and acceptance.

Guilt stands in the way of acceptance. Letting go of guilt opens up acceptance. It also empowers more gratitude and blessings.

You’ve heard the old saying “It’s better to give than to receive.”

But it’s vital to be willing to receive.

Receiving empowerment gives us more ability to give.

We can give first priority to service. We can accept empowerment in order to give more.

This isn’t saying that you have to give anything at all. Many people don’t.

But there can be pure joy in giving to people who receive in gratitude. People like to help you when you live in gratitude.

Some of the greatest gifts include unconditional love, attentive listening, and other forms of empowerment.

And when we empower others, we let go of guilt and become more willing to accept the goodies.

There is something sacred about putting our hands together in a prayer position. Doing that can trigger energies at the level of unconditional love.

But there are other ways to pray. We can express gratitude for all the blessings in of our lives. This includes past blessings, present blessings, and future blessings. If you look at things in a certain way you see everything as a blessing. There really is a blessing in every situation. Some blessings are more visible than others.

One approach to prayer is through a pad of paper or a computer word processor. We can express gratitude starting with the most visible blessings in our lives. As we do this more and more we become aware of less obvious blessings as blessings.

Gratitude is the recognition of blessings as blessings.

We can start by deliberately pondering each blessing and pondering why that is a blessing. But we can really kick it into high gear when we let go of thinking and simply let it flow. Keep on typing or writing.

Stream of consciousness gratitude is an amazingly effective form of prayer, self-help, and spiritual processing. Keep on typing or writing without thinking much about it. Eventually you can let go of the thinking altogether and feel the warmth and the love as you experience the gratitude.

Just keep flowing. You can start a sentence without knowing how the sentence will continue. Some of that will be nonsense. Just keep going with the expression of the gratitude. You are recognizing blessings as blessings.

Much of what you write will make sense. It will make sense in new ways that you didn’t realize before.

Your overall level of happiness will improve. It doesn’t have to take a lot to make you happy.

What counts is our level of happiness – not how much stuff we have. Stuff doesn’t make us happy.

Prayer / gratitude at the keyboard can get you to high levels of happiness very quickly. There is no limit to how good you can feel if you keep on writing and writing. Just let if flow.

Gratitude is one form of prayer. There are others, but that’s another topic.