How Gratefulness Works — Hans Wilhelm

Hi, I'm Hans Wilhelm, and in this short video in the LIFEexplained series I will demonstrate why gratefulness is such a powerful tool that can change how we feel about ourselves and the world around us in an instant. Remember Albert Einstein said that everything is vibration - including our material universe. With this understanding let us imagine - if you wish - this here is you or me. Naturally, we all have our own individual vibration. However, throughout our day - from morning till night - we are inundated with energies or vibrations from many different sources outside of ourselves. They can come from other people, from circumstances, television, from vagabonding thought complexes, negative influences and yes even from things and objects that we touch. Like for instance a chair that still carries the energies of the persons who sat in it before and which still can affect us. Or take the avalanche of information we get from our electronic devices. They carry a lot of different vibrations to which we react with our thoughts and emotions. What a dear friend recently called, "The constant drip of terrible hopeless news." All these vibrations can affect us if we carry corresponding vibrations in us such as our unresolved emotional issues, desires, guilt, fear and so on. Like attracts like. These outside vibrations can reawaken old long forgotten but dormant problems within us. They influence our feelings, choices, reactions and decisions. So, throughout the day, we are like a ping-pong ball to all these persistent and lurking vibrations from other sources that try to gain our attention, our energies and can infect us. We are mostly reacting to situations instead of responding to them. No wonder, when evening comes so many of us are exhausted. So how do we protect ourselves from these unwanted influences? Right! Through gratefulness! It is a powerful tool that not only gives us all the strength and protection from these negative outside influences but also changes our own vibration to a higher level and aligns us back with the stream of LOVE. Let's look at it why it works so effectively: Science has shown that If we are able to feel authentic gratefulness for our life, people in our life or aspects of our life, this emotion will immediately flood our brain with the powerful hormone oxytocin. This gives us a warm, glowing feeling. We feel supported, reassured, safe and less anxious. It can work instantly like an armor around us, because gratefulness makes us vibrate on a much higher level than these outside influences. When you are grateful you may have noticed how your stomach muscles relax and expand in your solar plexus. That is the Love stream working through us. We can actually feel it. Love is always expanding whereas fear or stress are contracting. Everything expands and enlarges when appreciated and loved. You may notice that the people around you appear nicer, the sky bluer, the flowers smell sweeter. Everything becomes alive in a whole new way when we are grateful. This is the basis of happiness. Happiness never comes from anywhere outside of us or from another person. Ever. It is total inside job. We are not grateful because we are happy, but we are happy because we are grateful. Gratefulness is always a decision and happiness is the result. Can we see how ingeniously simple this protection is and what it does to us? Gratefulness is strictly speaking nothing but a vibration. The vibration of excitement, of unconditional Love that pours through us and invigorates us. Just like the flow of water, gratefulness always goes where it is most appreciated. It's the Law of Attraction. Like a magnet it draws things to itself. The more grateful we are for all the good things we have we will start attracting more good stuff into our life. What we appreciate, appreciates us. And we will begin to see opportunities that we didn't see before. We then discover that the world around us is continuously supporting, helping and assisting us. In ways, we have never seen before. It opens our eyes that this is truly a friendly universe and everything is here to help us on our journey Home. We are aligned again! But what if we don't really feel a deep gratefulness for anything in our life right now? We can still be authentic by saying something like, "I am willing to feel grateful for my life, for my family, for my friends and so on." The willingness to feel grateful is a start for our subconscious to bring us into a higher vibration. We can also say, "I wish I was more grateful for my life, friends, family and so on" In hindsight, we have often discovered that a difficult situation in our life has actually served us. Therefore, we can always be thankful for the opportunities that even the most challenging situation, the most demanding people and the most grueling conditions offer us. Throughout the day we encounter limitless numbers of people, things or circumstances for which we can be grateful for. By doing this exercise throughout the day we switch the circuitry in our brain over time so that we begin to automatically see the silver lining in every challenging event. Tests at UCLA have shown that the best results happen when we think of at least 5 different aspects that we appreciate in a certain person, situation or condition. So, it is not the number of things that we are grateful for, but WHY we are grateful for them. As we have seen, gratefulness uplifts us, makes us feel more connected and most of all it gives us a feeling of fullness. Therefore, we call it grate-full-ness. And at the same time it also makes us more humble, like a child. With this child-like attitude we can go even one step further: Instead of just being grateful - like in the typical Buddhist tradition - we can now be thankful. Thankfulness is an even higher vibration than gratefulness as it acknowledges someone greater than ourselves to whom we can be thankful. We appreciate that everything we receive comes from that higher Source whom many of us call God. Our "Thank You, God" is a gesture to God, who dwells in us. It is also to ourselves that we are deeply aware and appreciative for all that we receive. God does not need our thanks. But we need to feel gratefulness, or even better: our deep thankfulness to restore harmony and balance in us. And the result is happiness. I hope you were able to see how gratefulness - or thankfulness - reconnects us with Unconditional Love - the stuff we're made of. In that high vibration, we know that even the worst situation in our life is here to serve us and to carry us to the next place in our growth. All it needs are these three words: "Thank you, God." They instantly make us feel grateful for the opportunity to heal old pain, to change old patterns and old beliefs. It is a simple - but very powerful tool for a happy life. Thank you for watching.