You’ll often hear me talk about the importance of gratitude on your money journey. The reasons are quite simple. What you appreciate appreciates. And when you are grateful for what you already have, it’s easier to see new business and money opportunities.
An example is “found money”. This can be the one-dollar bill you find in a jacket pocket or a quarter on your garage floor. It’s too easy to say, “Why should I be grateful? This was my money in the first place.”
That’s just the thing. The money would have been lost had you not found it. Now, because you found the money you’re able to enjoy it.
I can’t tell you the number of times I almost “lost” money in the form of refund checks from my insurance company and the like. Even though it was my money in the first place, had I not found the check I would have needlessly lost several hundreds of dollars. So, I express gratitude when I find this money.
This is just one example. There are many other ways to practice money gratitude, as you will see below.
1. Write “Thank You” on all your checks.
This one was strange to me when I first heard about it. Why should I write “Thank you” to someone who is taking money? I work hard for my money! I had no choice in the matter that someone else wants to put their grubby hands on my money.
This certainly one way to think about money. But that is a negative way and creates more blocks and resistance to money.
Another way is to be grateful the rent check gives you a place to live, a bed to rest your body, a kitchen to cook your meals, and a living room to read your books or enjoy your favorite shows. It also keeps you warm when it’s 30 F outside or cool when it’s 100+ F outside. Running water, electricity, gas, and garbage are relatively new inventions.
It was just only a hundred years ago that people relied on gas-burning lamps for illumination. Indoor plumbing and toilets didn’t exist. So, the structure you’re living in is a miracle of modern engineering, of which you should be grateful. Express gratitude to the people who work hard to generate electricity so that you can enjoy cold drinks from your refrigerator, see at night, watch a show, or read an article such as this one on the Internet.
2. Express Gratitude for Finding Money
Whether you find a $20 bill in your winter coat pocket that’s been sitting in your closet for the past year or a quarter on the floor of your garage, express gratitude in having found that money! It may have always been your money to begin, but it was lost and now it’s found. You’re able to enjoy the things you love with that money.
Many is a time I’ve let my mail sit unopened in a pile. When I finally get around to it a month or two after first receiving it, I find refund checks of one sort or another. Sure, it was my money to begin but now I can invest that money, buy something nice for myself, or just save it for a rainy day. It’s money I would have otherwise missed out on. So I express gratitude in having found it.
3. Express Gratitude When You Spend Money
This one goes in hand with the first item on this list, but applies to situations where you’re not necessarily writing checks but spending money with your credit card. Express gratitude when you spend money this way.
Be thankful for the gas in getting you from one place to another. Express gratitude in having the convenience of going to a store to shop for groceries. After all, you could be out hunting it like our ancestors did. If you get a paper credit card receipt, say “Thank you” before signing it. Better yet, write “Thank you” on it!
In other words, express gratitude you have the ability to pay for and enjoy the nice things in life.
Remember that you’re never a slave to money. Money’s primary functions are simple. It enables you to live comfortably, amplify the good you’re able to do in the world, beyond what you are physically capable of, in a shorter amount of time than if you went and did it yourself.
4. Avoid the hate at work.
Roughly fifty percent (50%) to seventy-five percent of employees (75%) feel disengaged at their jobs. That is to say, they are not completely present. Their minds may be wondering while they’re supposed to be working. They may be taking a longer break than usual or playing with their smartphones when they should be working. This is what it means to be not be completely present.
Yet, many people still go to work every day, doing the bare minimum, and praying they would not get fired!
Then they complain about their managers and the CEOs of their companies. Grievances may include some new and insane company policy; how the managers know about the problems with a product, yet continue lying to customers; or how they have been with the company for a while but haven’t had a raise in a couple of years. The list goes on and on.
It’s tempting to join your coworkers in the litany of complaints but do your best to stay away from them! That energy is largely negative and adopts a victim mentality. Gratitude means being grateful for having a job that enables you to live life comfortably. It means getting out of the victim mentality and moving towards one of initiative and responsibility. Your life is what you make it out to be. So, if you don’t like the way things are, you have one of three choices: Accept them as the way they are, change them, and develop the wisdom to know what is within your power to change!
5. Invest in Yourself
If you don’t love yourself, then it’s hard to spend money on yourself. I had this problem for a long time. I didn’t want to spend money on myself because I had a self-image and self-esteem problem. When I realized what I was doing to myself, I started treating myself better. This comes in hand with gratitude. It’s easy to say that you don’t deserve this or that. But that’s really a form of self-hate you’re practicing.
This is especially prevalent if you can never see yourself a certain way, in certain clothes, or driving certain cars. The Media and your own self-programming helps to perpetuate this often destructive and harmful programming.
But here’s the nice thing about practicing gratitude. As you learn to appreciate things around you, you start appreciating more of those things around you, including yourself!
So, get into the habit of spending money on and investing in yourself! This doesn’t necessarily mean invest in stocks and real estate. It also means getting an education so that you can improve your life.
Unless you’re an engineer, the last time you learned anything new is likely when you were still in school. Jump at the chance to take a workshop which will help you to run a business and do better for yourself. Take a class if it means improving your skillsets and makes you more marketable. Attend a seminar on improving your executive presence if it means increasing your chances of getting a promotion.
The people who are paid well in this world are paid for their knowledge and expertise, not the ability to do manual labor. If anything, manual labor made a believer out of education for me. I spent a summer helping my mom package electrical testers, which looked like markers, for shipment to stores for retail.
Each and every one had to be test by hand. Then, we would stick the UL certification sticker onto the pen. Next, we placed an anti-theft device on this piece of cardboard. The pen was then placed onto a pre-formed blister pack and then placed into a machine, which caused the plastic of the blister packaging to melt and adhere to the cardboard. Do this for 500 pens every day for eight hours a day and you’ll see just how mind-numbingly boring and dead-end it felt.
But this was an experience that would remain with me for a lifetime. Whenever I start to complain about how boring it is to sit in front of the computer and write code, I always remind myself that there are worse ways to make a living. I think back to those damned pen testers and how I hated those things and how dry and chapped they made my hands feel.
Not many people are able to code well and I remind myself that like writing, coding is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to many people. The gratitude helps ground me so that I can see the value I provide is knowledge and expertise, which helps my company make sales.
The moral of the story here is simple: First and foremost, honor yourself. Always be willing to pay yourself first. And that means spending money in the pursuit of lifelong learning for the betterment of your life.
Conclusion
In short, these are the seven (7) ways you can practice money gratitude. There are many more ways but to keep this article under 2000 words, I’m going to list seven ways here. In the future, when I add more ways, I’ll link back to this article.