Book Report: The Magic by Rhonda Byrne

Gratitude

This is a word I've struggled with. I get the concept. I like the energy and emotion of it.

I know it's important to be grateful. To have gratitude.

But on those days when I was tired and my mind swirled with bills and groceries and kids and schedules and 'when is the last time I was at the dentist' and 'is tomorrow trash day or recycling and trash day'...add in some night sweats and insomnia...a side of joint pain...extra weight I'd found in that phase of my life...'why is my hair falling out'...

...gratitude was hard to find sometimes.

Then I'd feel like a shitty person because I had a lot to be grateful for and I knew it.

It made me feel like I failed at gratitude.

I'll add that I believe gratitude is definitely a pathway to abundance. When I'm grateful for what I have already...it feels abundant. And since like energy attracts like energy - gratitude and abundance align with more gratitude and abundance.

When I'm not grateful, I feel like a jerk...that's not the energy I'm trying to align with and it also feels gross.

So when I say I've struggled....I mean it's been a struuuuuugggglllllllllle.

The truth is I'm not a shitty person or a jerk. I'm just regular.

And being regular, I need help sometimes.

When I found the book The Magic by Rhonda Byrne - back in 2020 - it was exactly what I needed.

I've read a fair number of books in my life and I've started waaayyyy more than that. I tend to have 3-4 books going at the same time, all partially read. I've accepted that about myself.

A lot of my books these days are about healing, personal development, or some technique I think I need to master. Not bad books but definitely on the dry side.

One of my favorite things about The Magic is you don't have to read it all at once and you still get the benefit of it. Also, it's not dry...it's easy to read.

Each of the 28 chapters focuses on one simple gratitude practice for the day. A couple of them you do daily but most of them are done only for one day.

It goes like this - you read the chapter in the morning (and they're short!) and then you get to do the gratitude practice throughout your day.

It's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! A few chapters you read the night before so you're ready first thing in the morning.

For the first 4-5 days, I was definitely a skeptic but I kept at it. It wasn't that complicated.

By the second week, I began to notice that my mood was better most of the time. Once I noticed that, I started noticing that it was much easier to find gratitude - which in turn - continued to elevate my emotions.

So much noticing. (And, you guys, awareness is power! You'll hear that again and again from me.)

I finished it...28 days...and I'm here to tell you, it made a difference.

Besides seeing my life in a different way, the 28 day practice began new neural pathways in my brain...pathways to noticing what was good instead of what was bad.

Pathways that allowed me to choose when I was ready to feel better about my life rather than swirl in the lower emotions...and if you remember 2020...there was a lot going on in the world.

In my own life, my dad had a heart attack (survived but it was scary) and I was officially single-momming for the first time in a while.

My emotional state mattered. Gratitude mattered.

Since then, I've started to read it about 5-6 times and finished two times. Sometimes, I just need some help getting back to the practice...other times, it was the whole book I needed. My neural pathways to gratitude are pretty well integrated nowadays.

I still have days when I'm tired and my mind swirls with bills and groceries and kids (teen and young adult now) and schedules and 'when is the last time I was at the dentist' and 'is tomorrow trash day or recycling and trash day'... but I can find gratitude so much faster now.

I'm really grateful for my estrogen patch and progesterone. Sometimes I'm grateful that when I open my fridge, it's cold in there. Other days I'm grateful my life is so amazing. I'll have gratitude my steering wheel works on the days when running a business gets me down. I've had gratitude that my eyelashes keep dust out of my eyes.

Some of those things may seem silly - and they kinda are - but I can find gratitude in the blink of my non-dusty eyes. And that makes all the difference.

So, if you have ever struggled with being grateful - or just want a regular gratitude practice, I strongly recommend getting your hands on a copy of The Magic.

Note - I won't recommend a book unless I've read it and it really changed my life. I know it can be tricky to find the time to read.

I decided not to link to it anywhere so you can choose where you spend your money. Maybe there's a copy at your local library.

Thanks for reading. :-)