Ten Practices To Express Gratitude While Serving Others

Although quite young, I can still remember my parents asking me, "What do you say?" as I was receiving something, be it a fruit, a gift, or a compliment. Of course, they were looking for the magical words "thank you", which many parents adamantly train their children to respond. Isn't it interesting that the very first training we encounter is to express gratitude! I find it very meaningful that, from the first Spiritual Law of Pure Potentiality comes the second Law of giving and receiving. Indeed, from the one comes the two, and with it, the dynamics of exchange. As written by Deepak Chopra "Giving and receiving are different aspects of the flow of energy in the universe. And in our willingness to give that which we seek, we keep the abundance of the universe circulating in our lives." How can you use this law to provide your customers a most fabulous service, which they will gratefully appreciate, and remember?

1. Give thanks; What and gratitude

It has been said that, if there was only one prayer, it would be one of expressing gratitude. And since this is our second piece, I would add that the second prayer could be this of asking for a way to be grateful again... Have you ever been so engaged into your desiring mind that you could only see what you did not have? It is as if the universe wants to lavish you with gifts, yet you keep on refusing them, a very painful position! On the other end, you have had the experience of not only accepting what life brings, but welcoming it fully into your heart... That shift in viewpoint is gratefulness!

Practically;

Say thank you, often. Say thank you everywhere. Say "thank you" when you talk to your clients, when you write to your clients, on the invoices you send. Say "thank you" to your staff. Say "thank you" when you talk about your clients. Say "thank you" in your mind when you think of your clients, of your staff, of your computer...

2. Give thanks; Why and gratitude

Let's see; on one hand, I deprive me of gratitude, and get to experience the deep frustration of not having what I want; on the other hand, I open to life and to being grateful and simply feel wonderful! Tough choice! So, I am not asking you to let go of the vision that you are forsaken, and that nothing works in your life. You can keep that perception; it is yours! I am asking if you can see a benefit to letting it go? How letting go of that thought would affect your health, your wealth, your surroundings, and ultimately the world?

Practically;

Enter a gratitude practice with your clients; create a client of the month ritual, where you would let all your client base know that every month, you and your staff elect a client, to be "Client of the Month", and receive special privileges during the month, such as being taken out to lunch, or sent a couple of movie tickets. On the first of the month, you may also send an email, or design a board with your client's picture and name, and a little blurb about who s/he is.

3. Give thanks; Grate-fulness and gratitude

The key word here is "fullness". Developing the ability of being totally involved in responding to what life gives, as it is, is the greatest blessing you can bestow on yourself and others. That quality of being fully in the moment of anything you may do, of bringing the totality of your being into it will organically engender grace. That experience of grace is amazing, because it is totally undeserved, in the sense that no one can earn it. Actually the very search of grace will elude it, as grace and "gratuity" are free. It is only granted unassumingly; amazing grace!

Practically; Do you have a full expression of gratitude to offer your client base? Do you have a system in place where you can show your gratitude, from the beginning of your relationship to the end? For example, you could send a hand written thank you note after the first contact, or immediately after you are hired.

You could design a "good bye" package to send your customer when your work and adventure together are complete.

4. Give thanks; Kindness and Gratitude

When you are in the full appreciation of life, when you are totally welcoming the whole picture, isn't it true that you belong, that you are one with all that is? There is no more giver and taker, there is just one entity, one reality. The seller and the buyer become one, simply because feeling one with the universe means that you are two no more. That is the ultimate kindness, to yourself and others, when you forget your identity, and when you lose your desire to receive for the self alone... Such a gift; that is so kind!

Practically;

Perform random acts of kindness, be they a sincere compliment given to your customer, or a fruit basket. Know that the exchange, the trade, the gift, whether it is energetic or material is the kindness itself! Wayne Dwyer mentioned how extending kindness heals both the giver and the receiver as it unites them. A simple kind attention will make anyone thankful. Move from trading in kind to exchanging kindness; everyone will win!

5. Give thanks; Attitude and gratitude

Marcel Proust beautifully stated: "Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." Do you like people? Are you genuinely happy to have friends, and customers? Are you truly looking forward to your time with a client? Are you naturally enjoying your exchange with the people you meet? Your happiness is the greatest gift you can give the world, the greatest service you can offer a client.

Practically;

Give gifts, starting with the gift of your happiness to be in business with someone. Once that is in place, turn thankfulness into thoughtfulness: for example, provide a voice mail with "Tips of the Day," have flowers or cookies delivered to your clients, offer an online gift certificate. And when what you provide is not what is looked for, give business to others: refer a client to someone else.

6. Give thanks; Children and gratitude

Did you notice that children are naturally grateful? In "The Religious Potential of the Child," Montessori Teacher Sofia Cavalletti writes, "The prayer of children up to the age of seven or eight is almost exclusively prayer of thanksgiving and praise." Slow down aging and become a child again, gratefully!

Practically;

Children respond to sensory pleasures, i.e. sight, colors and smells, from the color yellow to dangling keys, to baking aromas... Dazzle the children of your clients, the inner child as well as their kids, with fun colors, pleasant sights and sounds. Provide a drawing area, with crayons, paints and games. Pay attention to the music played in the waiting room, or on your answering device. Have fabrics and textures they can enjoy!

7. Give thanks; Surprise and gratitude

The problem with the mind is that it thinks it knows something. That very knowing is what keeps the spontaneity out of life, and the possibility of being surprised. A life lived without a sense of surprise, of the unexpected is a life unlived, constricted by old patterns and fixed perceptions. Train yourself to notice what is surprising, what is extraordinary in your life... You may even find that, no matter what the conditions are, even the repetition of a yoga class, or of a daily meal can be a surprise! After all, isn't it surprising that we would have a whole world?

Practically;

Practice spontaneous Customer Service. Out of the blue, send an article of interest, a beautifully wrapped candle, a pair of tickets to a ball game, a bouquet of flowers. Surprise and effect guaranteed!

8. Give thanks; Abundance and gratitude

As offered by the Pope; "Now golden fruits on loaded branches shine, And grateful clusters swell." When we can realize that we receive always more than we give, then life truly becomes rich. Gratitude is a magnet for the things you most desire. "Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life." Christiane Northrup.

Practically;

Give a little and you'll receive a lot. Give a lot, and you'll receive even more! When speaking, writing, lecturing, giving a class, give it all, all you've gotten to give! That will be received so enthusiastically that you will transform instantaneously strangers into referring angels.

9. Give thanks; Health and gratitude

Interestingly connecting the dots between science and spirituality, psychologists are now looking at how emotions such as gratitude and thankfulness influence our health. Dan McAdams of Northwestern University, for example, specializing in well-being research, mentions studies suggesting that increasing a person's sense of thankfulness will lower stress. Psychology professor Barbara Fredrickson, who teaches at the University of Michigan, has found that gratitude directly lessens the effects produced by negative emotions such as anger and anxiety.

Practically;

Is your business peace and pleasure inducing or stress inducing for your clients? How simple and easy is it to return an item? Might the use of cutting edge technology make it challenging for customers? Does your customer service return calls promptly, and humanly?

10. Give thanks; Opportunities and gratitude

The more one practices feeling gratitude, the more one comes to the experience where circumstances do not matter. There is always another way to look at it, always a way to find a gift in the hand one is dealt. Can you see the wholeness, the holiness in this which you take for granted? By focusing on finding the good and the beautiful, gratitude naturally arises. When a challenge occurs, ask yourself: "What is my opportunity here? How can I see this as added value?" Indeed, there is always another way to look at it, especially if you ask to be shown...

Practically;

Your worst experiences and most painful memories with your clients are your best helpers towards having a shining, beaming customer service. Welcome any drama, any rejection, any delay, any frustration as an angelic gift bringing development to your practice or business. Be grateful for these opportunities to evolve and to love!

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Unless noted otherwise, all material is written and edited by Mahalene Louis, Copyright (c) Soulvision Axis, Inc. (r) 2003. All rights reserved. You may reprint material from "Turn on the Light!" Top Ten in other electronic or print publications provided the above copyright notice and a link to http://www.mahalenelouis.com is included in the credits. Also please send us a copy of the publication. When forwarding this material, please send the entire article intact and unadulterated.

Bio

Mahalene is an Inspiration Anchor, an Artist, an Author and the President of Soulvision Axis, Inc., a company assisting visionaries to unleash their creativity and awaken their spirit. She authored the Ten Techniques for heARTful living, as a result of 22 years of study and experience in creativity, communication and human development.

Beyond several local publications and national e-publications to which she is a regular contributor, she currently writes a blog (http://www.mahasblog.com) and publishes a monthly e-zine, Stop Trying, Start Trusting Mahazine, addressed to visionaries, holistic coaches, and consultants on the way to birth their personal and professional leadership. She also offers a Seven Weeks Mini-course, mad from the heART, and mini inspiring movies. Please do feel free to check out her work; http://www.mahalenelouis.com

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Experiencing Gratitude

If we know where to look, it is undeniable that we have much to be grateful for. Endowed with abundance in spirit, we are not left wanting when it comes to what really matters in life. Surrounded by blessings, they form the ocean in which we wade. Guided by grace, it is the shepherd whom we are called to follow. Immersed in love, it is the fire that warms the heart and lights the way.

To doubt that what you have been given is a blessing in spirit is to deny the greatness of God. Being of him, it resonates in the heart which is the only place that is capable of appreciating his goodness. Being what he has touched, it honours his coming, like the sun honours the moon that comes to give it rest. Complementing each other in the way that he intended, neither grows restless in what they have been called to do. Realizing the perfection in their union, they trust him because they know him, the purveyor of beauty, and the beauty being observed.

Broken we fall and whole we rise, to transcend our suffering with thankful cries. But what is denied is never transcended because it remains clouded by the darkness. With this, know where the ego seeks to keep you. Wanting to deny the presence of God in your life, the ego will work hard to keep you ignorant of the many blessings which are yours to enjoy. Wanting to give itself power, it will identify itself as the source of those blessings, but this it does with a foolish audacity.

Wanting to manipulate its way into your confidence, it feeds you lies; but these lies are transparent to spiritual eyes. Seeing beyond what the ego wants you to see, it becomes clear that the ego's game is one of control. By wanting you to see it as a source to be trusted, it wants you to endow it with power that it does not have. Fantasizing about possessing the power of God, it knows that this can never be, unless it convinces you to accept it without question, for as you think, so shall you be, and so shall your world come to testify that it is as you have made it.

Seeing not God in what surrounds you, you will not be inspired to give thanks for what you have been given. Seeing not God, you cannot honour him as the source of your abundance. This, you will credit to the ego, but how can this ever be, if what consumes your mind are thoughts of fear and lack. Lack is not abundance, as fear is not love. See in this, that what brings abundance into your life transcends the ego because it is not limited by it.

Being beyond the capacity of the ego to control, the heart knows no limits in expressing gratitude for what it knows to emanate from God's graceful hands. United with truth, it carries an authority that cannot be superseded by the mind that is susceptible to embracing what contaminates rather than clarifies what the spirit makes available for our understanding.

Seeking always to guide us in truth, the spirit points to the heart which when honoured as the source of truth gives authority to the mind that humbles itself in service. But not so holy is the separated mind that has taken it upon itself to be the adjudicator of truth. Serving the ego, it is incapable of knowing the gifts of spirit, for only what it is capable of perceiving are the treasures of the physical world. But even these, it is reluctant to honour, for it fears that God will reveal himself in and through them.

Not wanting to emphasize what has the potential to lead to its destruction, it puts before your eyes what you want but do not have. Hungry for what the physical world tempts you with, you grow discontented with what is already present in your life. Wanting not what you have, you look out into the future and find excitement in the promise of the next acquisition. But is this ever wise, for can what you crave be what brings you the fulfilment that you seek?

Learn from this that the ego promises much, but delivers little. Wanting to keep your attention in the future which it has convinced you promises fulfilment, it deprives you of the peace which can only be found in the place where it exists, in the now. What this has to teach is that it is in the gifts which fill the now that we must be grateful for if we are to know peace in spirit, and while the now is enough in the peace that it brings wholly to our hearts, it is the blessings that accompany it that we must be content with, for as we are content with them, so are we aligned with the peace that contentedness loves as itself.

I know in my own life that when I am experiencing an absence of peace in the now, I must have strayed to put attention on the future as the source of my fulfilment. In the modern world that we live in, it is very common to look to the future, and have that be what we focus on, being the space in which we seek to make our goals a reality. But how can this fully serve us if it is not tempered by being present in the moment, which is the foundation on which any future moment will arise.

Without the present moment, the future is destined not to reveal itself, for what is the future but a series of present moments that are yet to come. Blessed only with what we have in the present moment, this is what we should be grateful for because we need nothing else other than it to realize God's presence in our lives. For this reason alone, it is significant as being not a means to an end, but the end itself.

This is why we should use it as the medium through which we practice gratitude in our lives. Realizing our blessings in the moment, there should be no delay in our offering of gratitude, for as we do this, so do we give the ego power, being the apathetic identity within that is content in taking things for granted. With this, make it your task to become more conscious in the present moment, and as you find yourself wanting to project into the future, bring your thoughts back to the now, so that you can identify with and give thanks for the many blessings that accompany the breath of life in you which is the ultimate gift.

We can all begin to practice small acts of gratitude in our daily lives. A good start that you could make today would be to say a silent prayer as soon as you wake up in the morning. In this prayer, you can thank God for the gift of the present day which you are so fortunate to experience, and for the many other blessings which have been bestowed on you. Remember as you contemplate in prayer that there is no guarantee that any of us will wake to greet this day or the next, and just because you have awakened to greet the dawn since the time of your birth, it should not be taken for granted that each day is a new gift to be cherished and experienced fully. With this, appreciate that there are people all over the world who will not wake to live another day in this wonderful world.

The beauty of instituting this daily practice is that it begins to set a very peaceful and harmonious tone throughout the course of your days by expanding your awareness of the abundance which surrounds you and is a part of you. What you will start to find is that as you grow in consciousness, each and every moment will begin to take on a new dimension and your sensory and spiritual acuity will amplify beyond measure. The shift that you experience will be so profound that you will begin to feel like you have been living two separate lives. Being alive for the very first time, you were blind but now can see.

The bliss generated by this state is divine and indescribable. The warm shower, the melodic song of a bird, the fragrance of a rose and all the other things that we have conditioned ourselves to take for granted become moments in eternity born of grace. By immersing ourselves in these heavenly experiences, we become one with the universe and one with God, for he and his love pervades all that his hands created. This state of tranquil loveliness is what it means to dance with life.

Seeing God's blessings in all that we do is one of the great challenges of life. Living fast paced lives, we entertain many thoughts, each seeming to grab for our attention more feverishly than the last. Living this way, we can't be said to be interacting with life at its deepest level. Caught up in our minds, we make of the world what we need from it, rather than accepting it as it is. Wanting it to be something different from what it is, our capacity for gratitude eludes us because we have made our acceptance conditional on the physical world being pleasing to us.

Pleased, we satisfy the ego, but where does this drive us but deeper into distress. Being neither present nor grateful, where we stand are as prisoners unto ourselves who are incapable of bringing to the physical world the respect that it deserves as a manifestation of his divine will. This is why we abuse it as we do ourselves, for what does not conform to the ego's expectations is treated with disregard that is born of distain.

So insulated have we become and so dysfunctional in our relationship to food that we almost treat eating as a chore which gets in the way of other things that we perceive will add value to our productivity. We shovel the food into our mouths with busy minds preoccupied with the details of our tight schedules that lay ahead. Saying grace before you begin to eat a meal is a small act of gratitude which goes a long way to cultivating an attitude of gratitude if it is practiced consistently. What this does is that it focuses your attention on the present moment and offers thanksgiving for the blessing that you are about to receive.

There is no one correct way of saying grace. The only prerequisite is that it is said genuinely and lovingly from the heart. The words that I offer him are, "My heavenly father, I ask you to bless this food that I am so fortunate to be able to receive and enjoy. May it nourish my body on this beautiful day and energize my mind to think loving and creative thoughts. All glory be unto you who live in me. Amen". The beauty of giving thanks in the form of grace is that it transforms the routine into the sublime. With it, eating no longer becomes an opportunity to gratify the senses. Inspired by gratitude, it will become much more, bringing fulfilment not only to the stomach, but also to the heart.

Recognize that you are privileged to have the means to eliminate your hunger at any given time and that it is God's grace that has put you in this position. Know that if God is in everything, then he is in the food that will nourish, sustain and replenish your body. And even as you eat, you are not alone, for the hand that has graced your heart, has also graced your plate. To know this is to know the abundance of God, always giving and never withholding the fruit of love that is the inheritance of his children.

Another powerful way to begin cultivating more gratitude in your life is by starting a gratitude journal. Being simply a daily list of all of the things that you have been blessed to receive, it makes more conscious the blessings that are easily taken for granted by the unconscious mind. By writing them down in contemplation, you become more centred, and being more centred, you become more receptive to the blessings of the spirit. With that being what you are continually focusing on, it is inevitable that more blessings will continue to show up in your life. Building momentum with every entry, the presence of the spirit becomes more palpable in your life because that is where your energy is being directed.

Having used one for a long time, I am now more attuned to spotting the gifts of my life, and not letting them pass me by, my spark for life shines strong, for with spiritual eyes I can see that love surrounds me. Allowing this love to be what greets me, I know that every moment is a sacred one, being eternity's gift in a bottle, I give thanks that grace has come.

L.C.Duperouzel - http://lcduperouzel.wordpress.com/

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