Marcus Aurelius – Pam Grout

Love or above

November 9, 2022 26 Comments

“This whole experiment in pretending to be a human was intended as a light comedy, a stroll in the garden, a cheeky knock-knock joke.”–Matt Cornwall

What I’m about to say is so simple that I know for a fact that a lot of you will dismiss it, write it off, roll your eyes and think “there she goes again, talking nonsense.”

So I’m going to ask you to take this rather primitive, four-word strategy out for a spin. Don’t take my word for it. Just try it.

Ready? Give thanks for everything.

What do you have to lose? Unless you woke up feeling absolutely blissful this morning, excited to leap out of bed, there’s always room for improvement. Try this for the next 21 days. And see what happens.

Remember, I said thanks for everything.

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius pointed out some 2000 years ago that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts. And the quality of our thoughts depends on our perception.

And while there are lots of techniques for changing perception (meditation, affirmations, going to workshops are a few that springs to mind), the one that ALWAYS, 100 percent of the time works is counting your blessings.

I was reminded of this potent manifestation technique at All Souls this past weekend. I was standing in line to get a latte and one of the beautiful participants, also jonesing for caffeine, expressed her excitement at the new PERFECT job she’d started the Monday before. She said this awesome job literally fell into her lap (she didn’t even apply, if I remember correctly) after she started practicing the gratitude program I wrote about in Thank and Grow Rich.

It was all surprisingly easy. And that’s the other perception I personally play with on the regular. Things don’t have to be hard. Life can be easy. As easy, my friends, as “giving thanks for everything.”

Again, nothing to lose and a whole new perception to gain. #222 Forever!

Pam Grout is the author of 20 books including E-Squared, E-Cubed, Thank & Grow Rich and her latest, The Course in Miracles Experiment: A Starter Kit for Rewiring Your Mind (And Therefore Your World).

A Tale of Two Pams

October 17, 2016 33 Comments

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”―Marcus Aurelius

Lately, I’ve been observing the two Pams who live inside my brain. I find it’s helpful to narrow them down, to notice which one’s in charge.

First, there’s Blessed Pam. She, of course, notices how lucky she is, how amazingly awesome life is, how everything always works out.

And then there’s FML Pam.

FML Pam (and if you don’t know what this means, I’ll just say it’s a social media acronym people use to express displeasure with certain life events) tends to notice problems, just wee little ones like politics or wrinkles or a belief that something is not exactly how it should be.

FML Pam tends to be a writhing, whirling crazy dervish that, like a pinball, careens around my head lighting up neurotransmitters of fear and worry.

When Blessed Pam is driving the car, life is good, as the popular t-shirt proclaims, reality is sweet and celebration is the norm.

But when FML Pam calls for a Chinese fire drill and runs around the car to grab the wheel, a whole different story unfolds.

It’s quite fascinating to watch which Pam is generating my thoughts.

Nowadays, when I notice FML Pam getting noisy, I simply tell her “thanks for sharing.” And remind her what A Course in Miracles promises. That problems are nothing but wrong perception. And they literally wither and die when we don’t feed them with our attention.

When we pump up what the Course calls “our weakened ability to be grateful,” our perception changes as does our whole world. We come to realize Truth–that we can never be abandoned, that we have everything we need and that life constantly works on our behalf.

Sounds pretty much like a no-brainer to me.

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the just released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.