The Magic (8 page)

But I have to say that I am really grateful for
              
.

Finish the rest of the sentence with something – anything – that you’re grateful for. Take this magic lifeline with you, and grab a hold of it whenever you need it.

And if any little problem or situation appears in the future, remember to put out the embers with gratitude before it grows into a fire. At the same time you will ignite the magic in your life!

Magic Practice Number 7

The Magical Way Out of Negativity

1. Count Your Blessings: Make a list of ten blessings. Write
   why
   you’re grateful. Reread your list, and at the end of each blessing say
   thank you, thank you, thank you,
   and feel as grateful for that blessing as you can.
   
2. Choose one problem or negative situation in your life that you most want to resolve.
   
3. List
   ten
   things that you are grateful for about the negative situation.
   
4. At the end of your list, write:
   Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the perfect resolution.
   
5. Just for today, see if you can get through one day without saying anything negative. If you notice yourself thinking or saying something negative, use the magic lifeline. Stop immediately and say:
   But I have to say that I am really grateful for
                 
   .
   
6. Just before you go to sleep tonight, hold your Magic Rock in one hand, and say the magic words,
   thank you,
   for the
   best
   thing that happened during the day.
   

Day 8

The Magic Ingredient

“A thankful heart hath a continual feast.”

W. J. Cameron (1879–1953)
JOURNALIST AND BUSINESSMAN

Giving thanks for food before you eat is a tradition that has been followed for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Egyptians. With the fast pace of life in the twenty-first century, taking the time to give thanks for a meal has more often than not been left behind. But using the simple act of eating and drinking as an opportunity to be grateful will increase the magic in your life exponentially!

If you think about a time when you were really hungry, you will remember that you could not think or function normally, your body felt weak, you might have started to tremble, your mind became confused, and your feelings plummeted. All of this can happen after not eating for just a few hours! You need food to live, to think, and to feel good, and so there is a
great
deal to be grateful for about food.

To feel even more gratitude for food, take a moment and think about all the people who contributed to you having food to eat. For you to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, the growers had to plant and nurture the fruit and vegetables with continuous watering, protecting them over many months until they were ready for harvesting. Then there are the pickers, the packers, and the distributors, and the transportation people who drive enormous distances day and night, all of them working together in perfect harmony to ensure that every fruit and vegetable is delivered fresh to you, and is available year round.

Think about the meat growers, fishermen, dairy farmers, coffee and tea growers, and all the packaged food companies who work tirelessly to produce the food we eat. The world’s food production is a breathtaking orchestration that takes place every day, and it’s unfathomable that it all works when you think about the number of people involved in maintaining the world’s food and drink supplies to stores, restaurants, supermarkets, cafés, airplanes, schools, hospitals, and every home on the planet.

Food is a gift! It’s a gift of nature, because there would be nothing for any of us to eat if nature didn’t supply us with the soil, nutrients, and water to grow food. Without water, there would be no food, vegetation, animals, or human life. We use water to cook our meals, grow our food, maintain our gardens, supply our bathrooms, sustain every vehicle that moves, support our hospitals, fuel, mining, and manufacturing industries, enable transportation, make our roads, make clothes and every consumer product and appliance on the planet, make plastic, glass, and metal, make life-saving medications, and build our homes and every other building and structure. And water keeps our bodies alive. Water, water, water, glorious water!

“If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977)
ANTHROPOLOGIST AND NATURAL SCIENCE WRITER

Where would we be without food and water? We simply wouldn’t be here. None of our family or friends would be here either. We wouldn’t have this day, or any tomorrow. But here we are on this beautiful planet together, living life with its challenges and ecstatic joys, because of nature’s gifts of
food
and
water!
To say the simple, magic words,
thank you,
before you eat or drink anything is an act of recognition and gratitude for the miracle of food and water.

The incredible thing is that when you are grateful for food and water, it doesn’t just affect your life; your gratitude also impacts the world’s supply. If enough people felt gratitude for food and water, it would actually help the people who are starving and in great need. By the law of the attraction, and Newton’s law of action and reaction, the action of mass gratitude must produce an equal mass reaction, which would change the circumstances of scarcity of food and water for everyone on the planet.

In addition, your gratitude for food and water keeps the magic continuing in
your
life, and it will weave its glorious golden thread through everything that is dear to you, everything that you love, and everything that you’re dreaming of.

In ancient times people believed that when they blessed their food and water with gratitude it purified whatever they were blessing, and when you look at the theories and discoveries that quantum physics have made in recent times, such as the observer effect, the ancients may very well have been right. The observer effect in quantum physics refers to changes that the act of observation makes on whatever is being observed. Imagine if focusing gratitude on your food and drinks changed their energy structure, and purified them so that everything you consumed had the ultimate effect of well-being on your body?

One of the ways to experience the magic of gratitude instantly with food and drinks is to really savor what you’re eating or drinking. When you savor your food or drinks you’re appreciating them, or being grateful. As an experiment, next time you’re in the middle of eating food or drinking any liquid, when you take a mouthful, concentrate on the taste of the food in your mouth or the flavor of the liquid before you swallow it. You’ll find that when you focus on the food or drink in your mouth, and savor it, the flavors seem to explode, and when you don’t focus the flavors weaken dramatically. It’s your energy of focus and gratitude that instantly enhances the flavor!

Before you eat or drink anything today, whether you’re about to eat a meal, a piece of fruit, or a snack, or have a drink of anything, including water, take a moment to look at what you’re about to eat or drink, and in your mind or out loud say the magic words,
thank you!
And if you can, just take one mouthful really savoring it; it will not only increase your enjoyment, it will help you to feel far more gratitude.

You can also try something I do, which helps me to feel even more gratitude. When I say the magic words, I wave my fingers over my food or drink as though I’m sprinkling them with magic dust, and I imagine that the magic dust instantly purifies everything it touches. Doing this has helped me really feel that gratitude is the magic ingredient, and I want to add it to everything I eat and drink! If you find it more effective you can imagine that you have a shaker of magic dust in your hand, and you’re shaking the magic dust out of the shaker all over your food before you eat it, and into every drink.

If at any time during the day you forget to say the magic words,
thank you,
before you eat or drink anything, as soon as you remember, close your eyes, go back in your mind to the time when you forgot, visualize yourself in your mind for a second or two before you ate or drank, and say the magic words. If you forget to be grateful for food and drinks multiple times in the day, then repeat this same practice tomorrow. You can’t afford to miss a single day in building your gratitude – your dreams depend upon it!

Being grateful for the simple things in life, like food and water, is one of the deepest expressions of gratitude, and when you can feel that degree of gratitude, you will see the magic happen.

Magic Practice Number 8

The Magic Ingredient

1. Count Your Blessings: Make a list of ten blessings. Write
   why
   you’re grateful. Reread your list, and at the end of each blessing say
   thank you, thank you, thank you,
   and feel as grateful for that blessing as you can.
   
2. Before you eat or drink anything today, take a moment to look at what you’re about to eat or drink, and in your mind or out loud, say the magic words,
   thank you!
   If you want you can sprinkle your food or drink with magic dust.
   
3. Just before you go to sleep tonight, hold your Magic Rock in one hand, and say the magic words,
   thank you,
   for the
   best
   thing that happened during the day.
   

Day 9

The Money Magnet

“It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945)
LUTHERAN PASTOR

Gratitude is riches and complaint is poverty; it’s the golden rule of your whole life, whether it’s your health, job, relationships, or money. The more grateful you can be for the money you have, even if you don’t have very much, the more riches you will receive. And the more you complain about money, the poorer you will become.

Today’s magical practice turns one of the biggest reasons people complain about money into an act of gratitude, and so it has double the power to change the circumstances of your money; you’ll be
replacing
a complaint, which makes you poorer, with gratitude, which magically brings you riches.

Most people wouldn’t think they complain about money, but if there is a lack of money in their life they are complaining without realizing it. Complaining happens through people’s thoughts as well as their words, and most people aren’t aware of the many thoughts in their head. Any complaining, negative, jealous, or worried thoughts or words about money are literally creating poverty. And of course the biggest complaints come when money has to be paid out.

If you don’t have enough money, paying your bills can be one of the most difficult things to do. It can seem like there is a greater stream of bills than there is money to pay them. But if you complain about your bills then what you are really doing is complaining about money, and complaining keeps you in poverty.

If you don’t have enough money, the last thing you would normally do is feel grateful for your bills, but in fact that’s exactly what you
have
to do to receive more money in your life. To have a rich life, you must be grateful for everything to do with money, and begrudging your bills is not being grateful. You must do the exact opposite, which is to
be grateful
for the goods or services you’ve
received
from those who billed you. It is such a simple thing to do, but it will have a monumental effect on the money in your life. You will literally become a money magnet!

To be grateful for a bill, think about how much you’ve benefited from the service or goods on the bill. If it’s payment for rent or a mortgage, be grateful that you have a home, and you’re living in it. What if the only way you could live in a home was by saving up all the money and paying cash for it? What if there was no such thing as lending institutions or places to rent? Most of us would be living on the streets, so be grateful to the lending institutions or your landlord, because they have made it possible for you to live in a home or apartment.