Hello, and welcome to section two in the course. And this section is on the nature of gratitude and how it can work for you, and how gratitude can change your perspective. And this is lecture six in the course and this is the introduction to section two. So, in this section we are going to talk about how gratitude can really make changes in your life by changing your perspective, because that lays the foundation for attracting abundance, changing the outcomes in your life and improving your relationships. And so if you're like most people, you've probably seen your share of setbacks, disappointments, annoyances in justices and perhaps even traumas in life. All of us have experienced those just it's just part of the human condition.

Additionally, you probably watch the news and observe in justices corruption, greed, poverty, disease, natural disaster war, human trafficking, oppression, starvation, you get the idea in it really has to be very disturbing to watch, things like that happen to other people, things like that happen to maybe your own people and maybe even to yourself in some cases. And it's very easy to become caught up in these and in the energies of frustration, futility, negativity, cynicism that might come from those. And that's enough to make anybody depressed. And it's not a matter of being indifferent to those things. Not at all. On the contrary, gratitude opens us up to compassion so that we can contribute in ways that actually help people, but standing around worrying about things and complaining about them, and stuff like that does not make us feel any better.

And it does not do anything to help other people feel any better. And and we've all done it, I've been guilty of it. And it's something that we need to work on and guard against. And gratitude is a great antidote to doing that. And so gratitude doesn't deny or undermine or downplay the very real and serious global impact. problems that we as humans face every day.

And gratitude also is not a catch all solution that will fix all of those problems. Gratitude is not a positive thinking system that will fix all those problems either. However, from the last section, you did learn the benefits of gratitude. And so a mindset of gratitude of simply choosing to see and observe more positive in our lives and in negative circumstances and more positive things at large. When we focus more on the positive than the negative and use gratitude as a vehicle to do this, we basically change our perspective and we're more aware of the blessings and goodness that surrounds us, our perspective changes, and we perceive those changes. And when we do this for a period of time, it almost seems like magic.

A lot of the powerful experiences of gratitude is up to you. According to a prominent gratitude scholar scholars Michael McCulloch, Robert Emmons, Who was mentioned in the scientific proof lecture and Joanne sang, there are four dimensions of gratitude and to the level which you can cultivate each of these dimensions of gratitude in your life, you will experience transformation, change perspective, increased abundance and better outcomes in certain situations. So how does this connect with the negative things and the hurtful things that occur in life? Well, it's a great antidote, you've probably or maybe you have heard that being poor does not help you help other people get out of poverty. Well, if other people are in situations where they're oppressed, or they're in poverty, or they're in some other kind of bad situation, you being miserable does not help them either. On the contrary, you have the energy and the resources to pull them up if you're in a place where you're in a better situation.

And so, the four dimensions here will help you to practice gratitude. So you can do that and the four dimensions of gratitude. You'll want to Try to practice these as much as possible and implement these as much as possible when you're doing the different practices of gratitude that we'll cover in the next section. So the first dimension of gratitude is intensity. And that's the depth of feeling from a slight emotional touch overflowing with tears. The second one is frequency.

And that is the ease with which grateful feelings are elicited. I would also add to that, that it's how often you practice gratitude. The third one is span. And so that's the number of different things which a person can be grateful for at the same time, and that is infinite. It's about perspective more than anything else. And then the fourth one is density.

And that's the number of different people for which a person can be grateful for in a single outcome. And so basically, with this practice, and these four dimensions of gratitude, I want you to try to practice them with as much intensity frequency span and density as possible. So it may be how to come back and study these dimensions, when you're doing the different practices of gratitude and cultivating daily gratitude, so that you can see how you can implement these more and get even more out of and put more into the practice of cultivating gratitude. And so the source from that was macola immense, insane, saying, and it's from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and it's called the Grateful disposition, a conceptual and empirical typography. And so you've heard the saying, in a couple of places already, that change, the things you look at, and the things you look at change.

Well, it may seem like a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. And so your perspective will change as you cultivate gratitude and greater degrees and in more creative ways with these dimensions. And so what you'll find is that for example, let's say you have a rude boss who turned you down for a promotion, perhaps you have been nervous about looking for a new job and the situation jarred you enough into looking for a wonderful new job. And that way you can be grateful to your boss as a teacher and as a catalyst for positive change in your life. So you can take something that maybe it's not as traumatic as, say, a fire destroying your home or a dictator. Taking over your country, that's obviously much, much worse.

But this gives you an example of seeing how something negative can be transformed into something wonderful. But be warned, if you transfer transform your attitude with high intensity, frequency, span and density for a concentrated period of time. Gratitude can be a jarring experience in the sense that it has a turn your life upside down hits you in the head consuming love kind of experience. It is very real. And this can bring on some fast changes in your life. In some cases, well, it's not a guarantee.

I've seen it happen again and again. If you do these be ready for that as a possibility. You may also be forced to let go have some negative things in your life and take responsibility for those because those things will come up So I just want to put that out there that sometimes negative things will actually come up because it's your spirits way of letting you know that you're ready to deal with it because you're practicing this gratitude. And you've got to release this ugly stuff from your life. And so you'll let go of some negative things in your life as well. And so, that's the end of this lecture.

And the next lecture we'll be talking about overcoming blocks to gratitude three strategies to change our personal narratives and I will see you in the next lecture.