My Eight Word Prayer of Gratitude

Gratitude- we know it's important to have, but it's not always easy to remain grateful during our day as we allow our attention to stray away from thoughts of gratitude and towards thoughts of stress and lack.  Feeling gratitude has become much easier for me since I started using a little eight word prayer of gratitude that I repeat multiple times throughout the day.  I came up with this gratitude prayer a while back and it has stuck with me ever since. It came to me as a thought and a feeling one day while I was pondering the concept of prayer and of "praying always". It is a succinct little prayer or mantra of gratitude that packs a powerful punch.  There are just eight words in the phrase- but it has the power to completely transform how I view any situation I find myself in with the end result being that I feel more gratitude in my life even in situations that I previously found stressful. I invite you to adopt the phrase as your own and see what a difference an increased focus on gratitude can make in your life.

The statement is this:

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now!"

Let me explain what these words mean to me and then give some examples of how they help me in my daily living.

THANK YOU FATHER

This is both an expression of gratitude and an acknowledgement of the source of all that I am grateful for. If you look at many of the prayers Jesus offered- they start with "I Thank Thee, Father".

THAT I AM

This is a statement of acknowledgement that I exist, that I am conscious and aware, that I am experiencing physical life in a physical body, but that I am not my body or even my experience. My body is not me, but mine. My mind is not me, but mine. My physical life is not me, but mine. I AM a son of God, existing without beginning and without end. I am here by choice and on purpose. I AM a free agent with the ability to choose at any given time my response to any situation rather that to react automatically and unconsciously. I AM is a name of God, and as his children it is our name too. It is a statement of freedom, an understanding that we are here to act and not be acted upon. We are, like God, creators, not victims. We are continually creating our own reality by the meaning we choose to give to any situation. In fact everything that happens is neutral- having no particular meaning until we give it meaning. Or rather having an infinite number of possible meanings until we choose one. I say we are creators, but it is probably more accurate to say "co-creators"- because while we are free agents, we do not and in fact cannot exist independently of God.

HERE NOW

This is a reminder to me to keep my attention and the light of my consciousness HERE and NOW where it has incredible creative power. Here and Now is the only time and place my attention can have any creative power. I cannot create in the past or the future and I cannot create somewhere else than in my world. I cannot create in anyone else's world, only mine.

So, taken all together, "Thank You Father That I Am Here Now" is a way of seeing whatever is right in front of me at any given moment as something to be grateful for and something worthy of my attention. Every situation is an opportunity to create goodness by choosing to assign a positive meaning to it.

I have found that this little eight word prayer is very helpful in my daily living. It is easy to feel grateful when things are going well and life seems good. Even in the good times, this little prayer can keep me humble and keep me grounded in the present and aware of the source of my blessings (hint- it's not me).

However, when things are not going "as planned" (which is often), is when this little prayer really has power. When I am facing a situation that makes me uncomfortable, scared, worried, or angry, I just say "Thank You Father That I Am Here Now" and I begin to feel grateful for the challenge that is in front of me right now. I begin to look for how I can bring my creative power of choosing a meaning to bear on this situation. I begin to look at how this situation is a friendly teacher helping me to face my weaknesses head on instead of avoiding them and come out stronger as a result. I look for deeper meanings below the surface level. How can this experience polish a rough edge, lead me in a better direction, bring me back to a more grounded awareness of my dependence of God, and my partnership with God to co-create in my world.

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