How to use gratitude to magnetize your dreams

Monday // February 1 // 2016

This post was written by life coach, blogger and writer Chloe from One Infinite Life. A week ago Vienda Maria did a video interview with me to talk about our upcoming festival, #RadLivin. In the video I spoked about how one of the key steps I’ve used to manifest my dreams is gratitude. Seeing as Chloe’s speciality is in gratitude, she’s the founder of The 28 Day Gratitude Project, she hopped onto the blog today to give you insightful tips on how to hone in on gratitude to amp up your dreams and magnetize them towards you even quicker. Take it away Chloe…

Over a decade ago now, I started practicing gratitude (with a rock!) and ever since, I’ve discovered how gratitude can truly make you feel like what you have right now is enough. I’ve also witnessed, in both myself and others, how appreciating what you have can make you feel happier, more positive and more optimistic.
Ultimately for me, I continue to practice gratitude because of this:

Gratitude has — and continues to — make my life infinitely better.

Through my experience of practicing gratitude, I’ve discovered that it can help you love what you’re doing (and where you’re at) right now, but it’s also useful for helping to move towards more.

So, you can actually use gratitude to help you achieve your dreams. Doing this is seriously some powerful stuff!

Here’s 5 ways you can use gratitude to really AMP UP the pursuit of your dreams and magnetize them towards you:

1. To appreciate where you are right now.

Start with using gratitude to cultivate appreciation for where you are right now, no matter how far away from your dreams you might be.

As Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough and more.” Doing this will make you happy with where you’re at right now, no matter where that is.

I truly believe that there is always something to be grateful for. You can use this as an opportunity to appreciate all the things you have in your life that you’re grateful for, more specifically, where you’re at in relation to your dreams.

For example:

If your dream is to run your own Mexican Food Truck (first call me because I’d be your best customer!) You might start off by cultivating gratitude because you have an amazing vision for what you want your business and life to look like. Your friends always ask you to make your secret guacamole recipe when you get together, you already own a tortilla press that you could use and you already have a job where you get to cook Mexican-Inspired food etc.

Or if you’re working a job you don’t absolutely love to support your dreams, you might start by cultivating massive amounts of gratitude for the resources that it’s providing you for your dreams.

Cultivating gratitude for where you are right now will help you to be okay with where you’re presently at. But, it’s totally okay to appreciate what you have now AND still want to work towards more.

2. To call in what you want more of.

Esther Jno-Charles said, “What you focus on expands. So focus on what you want, not what you do not want.” You can use gratitude to focus on what you want more of in your life in relation to your dreams.

Once you’re clear on what your dream is, you can cultivate some mega appreciation for how parts of your big dream are already present in your life.

For example:

If your dream is to go on an epic overseas adventure to explore the Amalfi coast, you might focus on cultivating gratitude for the exploration and adventure you already have in your life. Such as, appreciating when you spend the day at a beach you’ve never been to before, or when you explore your local area, or when you go on a micro-adventure, or when you discover a new hiking trail, etc.

You can use gratitude to help you focus on, and invite in more of, what it is you really want.

3. To propel you into taking action.

Taking action is so crucial to pursuing your dream and making it happen. Gratitude can be really useful in motivating you into take steps towards it.

When you have an action you need to take to move you forward and you’re feeling unmotivated to do it, you can ask yourself: Why will I be grateful I did this? Use your response (your why) as rocket fuel to help you get it done.

This can be useful for getting something relatively simple done (like finally completing your passport application) and even more so if the action you need to take is filled with fear.

For Example:

If you want to start a blog, but are really feeling the fear in regards to putting it live, asking yourself why you will be grateful after you’ve done it can help you to get it out there.

I’ve found that this future-tripping gratitude exercise has given me the courage and motivation I’ve needed to take action and do things I was really afraid to do.

Continue Reading…

3-minute Podcast: How to distinguish between an excuse or fear

Friday // January 15 // 2016

Often when there is something that we would love to do, we wait. We come up with reasons why we can’t do it now and whether we’re aware of it or not, our excuses usually come from fear.

In this podcast you will learn:

How to tell whether your excuse for not doing something you’d love to do now is legitimate or just fear.
How fear of doing what you love is often not in the doing what you love part, it’s in saying yes to the solution you’ve come up with.
The purpose of making a time frame for doing what you’d love to do now.

How To Bring Your Precious Dreams To Life

Tuesday // January 12 // 2016

This post was written by one of our inspiring #RadLivin speakers, Connie Chapman, and was originally featured over on her lovely site conniechapman.com. Hear her speak + meet her in person on 20 Feb 2016 at #RadLivin.

Recently, while cleaning out an old hard drive full of files, documents and folders, I discovered that on it lay the beginnings of dozens of beautiful, creative, heart-driven projects and ideas.

There were 2 ebooks, several ecourses, workshop outlines and many other ideas of projects I wanted to create.

All of them were just sitting there in the beginning brainstorm stages.

All of them in draft mode.

All of them born under a rush of passion, inspiration and love, but then abandoned and never given a chance to be seen by the world.

I felt my heart become heavy with sadness as I realised the extent to which I had been sabotaging my own creativity.

The Flow Of Creative Energy

Creativity is a process of bringing what you feel within, out.

You give it life.

You honour it enough to give your energy to it and use that energy to give it shape.

When something is conceived within you it begins as merely a concept in your mind, an image or an impression. And then through focus, will and conscious action you lovingly turn that inner impulse into form.

Giving birth to a creative idea is a practise of self-love.

A practise of showing deep respect for what is arising within.

A conscious honouring of what you feel.

A willingness to stop whatever you are doing so you can pay full attention to the inner sensation stirring within you.

How Are You Getting In The Way?

As I reviewed the projects on my hard drive, I could feel the passion, excitement and deep love that sat behind each of them. Each was born out of a divine moment of inspiration.

But to bring them to life, these ideas needed more from me than that.

They needed my love, my attention and care.

They need me to tend to them.

To make time for them.

To act on them.

Giving birth to your creative ideas requires patience, commitment and courage. You must move through your self-doubt and the fear of failure, your perfectionist nature and critical mind. You must support yourself rather than tear yourself down.

But what do I typically do instead?

I close the computer and go about my day, busying myself with things that my mind has decided are way more important than the birth of this precious creative idea.

I listen to that sneaky sabotaging voice in my head. It tempts me with easier tasks, busies me with my to do list, and pulls me further and further away from my true soul purpose.

So, despite the creative impulse that burns within me, I turn my back. I walk away, and I somehow justify to myself; “I am too busy for this right now, maybe another time.”

And so this has got me thinking about what it takes to bring a creative idea to life – the process of conception to completion.

Dreams: An open letter to the girl who was too afraid to say yes

Sunday // January 10 // 2016

The boundaries are not real.

The reason you’re saying no.

You have to think bigger,

your dreams depend on you doing so.

The walls you’ve put up,

the excuses you won’t leave behind,

the fear of the unknown keeps your thoughts in a bind.

Look a little deeper.

Ask a few more questions.

Learn to get out of your own way

and create your own intentions.

The opportunities are everywhere

not just the ones that aren’t here.

Let go of what you think you need to do

and let go of the fear.

We choose things that are not us

because at least we know the outcome.

Why are we so afraid to take the leap

and see what greatness we can become.

You didn’t come here to be stuck.

You didn’t come here to not be happy.

You came here to live out your truth

even if you don’t know what it is yet exactly.

Don’t waist your time on being stuck

when there are options other than ones of fear.

Step back and look from far away

and you’ll see the answers were always here.

Rad Livin’: Meet Alisha Brunton

Sunday // December 20 // 2015

You know when you see a creation, whether it’s art, music, you name it… and you need to know who was behind it? That’s how we felt when we saw the work by Alisha Brunton. She’s an illustrator and designer from New Zealand and the founder of Love Indigo Creative. Love Indigo is a, ‘Petite illustration and design studio for inspirational brands, change-making entrepreneurs and colour lovers.’

She’s extremely intuitive and just gets it. She’s worked with brands like Lululemon, Vienda Maria, Meg O’Sullivan’s Adventuring Home, and more. When developing our event #RadLivin, we knew that we wanted everything to feel like the message – created by rad people who are doing what they love now. Alisha is the mastermind behind the #RadLivin logo that you may see floating around the web; hand illustrated with love and raddness.

Meet Alisha…

Where are you in the world?

Auckland, New Zealand

How do you follow your bliss?

I’m a seeker at heart, eternally curious and always creating. Bliss for me is exploring new places, connecting with other passionate people, bringing creative dreams to life, getting sweaty on my yoga mat and constantly learning. Sometimes all in one day!

Can you explain how you went about taking your love for illustration and design and creating a business around that? What did you need to do in order to make this happen?

I briefly worked for another company when I first graduated, but I wasn’t excited about the work I was doing. I wanted to work with clients who were passionate about their projects and who shared my values. I always had projects on the side, but travelling for most of this year gave me this space to really think about what kind of business I wanted to build, and to start putting things into place for when I got back to NZ. After a few months, I realised I had the creative stuff sorted, but I was seriously lacking business knowledge. I’ve just finished the Owner’s Collective business mastermind, which has been a game changer for me!

Why do you love what you do?

I get to bring my clients’ creative dreams to life, which is the coolest thing ever. I’ve met so many wonderful people through my work, and many of them have become friends. I initially chose a creative career because it allows me to roam free and I love that I can work from anywhere.