You can change your life with a single thought.

This one thought can:
• Create great wealth
• Restore health and even cure disease
• Unlock your greatest potential
• Forge and fortify deep abiding love
• Inspire great joy to the point of bliss

You’ve heard me explain before how the creation process produces every outcome in our lives:

We get out of LIFE what we CREATE. Simple enough, right? We are all creative beings. We all arrive the same – naked, scared and ignorant. What becomes of our lives from that point forward is what we create (or don’t create).

So what drives and determines our creation process?

EXPECTATION. You’ve heard the saying, “Expectation manifests into creation.” Thus, expectation determines what we create in our lives.

So what are we expecting? Why does one person have a different expectation than another? Our THOUGHTS drive our expectation. Whatever we’re thinking about becomes what we expect to happen. This is why the great self-improvement books have focused on the power of thoughts: THINK and Grow Rich, The Power of Positive THINKING, As a Man THINKeth, The Magic of THINKING Big, etc.

Of all the thoughts you experience and control, there is one that can profoundly transform your life on a daily basis. What is it? Gratitude.

How does gratitude transform our lives?

Our mind is an auditing device that seeks to find what is wrong, lacking or missing in our environment. Its job is to avoid danger and ensure our survival with threat-assessment emotions like fear, hesitation and suspicion. If we allow these negative thoughts to dominate our mind and become our expectations they will determine the direction of our creation process. The ultimate result: a lifetime of disappointing and unfulfilling experiences and outcomes.

However, we CAN stop the natural negative tendency of our mind by redirecting it towards abundance and what’s positively possible by focusing it on what we’re grateful for. Almost instantly your life can change its trajectory.

This simple shift can change your world and all that you can create in it.

There are many “woo woo” theories about this phenomenon from “magnetic vibrations,” to the “Law of Attraction” (click here for the real explanation of this law), to a “Universal Consciousness.” But the explanation is far simpler:

You see and experience what you look for. That’s it.

Take this simple test: In the room where you’re sitting now, count the number of red items you see. Note as many as you can. How many items did you count? Now without looking again–eyes closed– how many items in the room do you remember were blue? You probably can’t recall many at all. When you open your eyes and focus on the blue items, you’ll probably see many more than you remembered. Why? Because the first time you weren’t looking for them, thus you didn’t see them. In your first reality they did really exist at all.

An attitude of gratitude adjusts the aperture of your mind to focus on the positive. Thus, you’ll see, discover and create more of the same, experiencing more abundance, prosperity, well-being, love, joy and happiness.

The Tangible Benefits of Gratitude

Health – Research has proven that practicing gratitude improves our emotional and physical well-being, reduces stress, worry, fear, anxiety and the conditions closely associated with these emotions such as high blood pressure, depression, heart disease, and immune system deficiencies.

Relationships – I loved what Joel Osteen said in my interview with him. Our partners usually fulfill only about 80% of our needs. Most people, however, focus on the 20% that’s missing. Thus, they ultimately become unhappy and unfulfilled. Sadly, many people will leave the relationship to find that 20% in someone else. What they find is that “new” person will also fulfill only about 80% of their needs as well—their just different needs and expectations from their last partner.

The key is to focus on the 80% of what is right, wonderful and beautiful about your partner and your relationship. Your positive perspective will change how you appreciate, interact and support your partner, thus garnering a much different response and engagement from them.

Wealth – When you see the glass half-full versus half-empty, you will start to see the abundance of water all around you. When you attune your mind to abundance you will start to develop new ideas, and see the opportunity and potential all around you. Your positive outlook will change how you walk, talk and interact in the world. Other influential and resourceful “birds of a feather” will also see the commonality and want to connect with you.

Put on your rose colored glasses.

Gratitude is a choice. It can become a positive habit—but only with discipline. With continued exercise and practice, it will create more abundance, prosperity, well-being, joy and happiness than you ever thought possible.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving—my favorite holiday and expression of my favorite success principle—I want to thank YOU – all of you who have read and followed me through this blog, on Twitter, Facebook and through everything we do at SUCCESS magazine and SUCCESS Media.

My mentor, Jim Rohn, taught me the greatest gift of all is the gift of personal development—so that is what I want to give you. The program that had the most impact on my development and good fortune has been Jim’s Challenge to Succeed program. I’ve listened to it over 60+ times and have given away many dozens of copies to people I care about.

As a further expression of my gratitude, I asked my SUCCESS Store staff to make the program available at the lowest price ever offered so anyone could afford to buy it—and buy several copies to give as gifts to others you might want to thank as well.

In addition, I asked if they could throw in a premium bonus on top. They did!
Go here to receive.

In what ways will you express your gratitude over the next week?
What is your favorite gratitude practice?
Please share your comments below and I hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday!

I got a call recently from a former employee. “I need to apologize to you,” he said. I hadn’t heard from this guy in more than five years. I had no idea why he would be calling me, let alone to apologize. He went on to say, “I hated you.”

Turns out, he resented me greatly calling him out when he was late, sending back his work frequently for improvement and even pushing him in his personal life. He went on to explain, “You were holding me to a standard I didn’t want and I hated you for it. But now, I finally get it.”

See, it wasn’t until he got fired from his last job that he truly began to understand what I was trying to do for him. He quit working for me, got another job and quit that one after only a year. Got another job, quit. Got another, quit. Finally, he just got fired.

“It took getting fired for me to realize you had been trying to do me a favor. You were the only one who saw I could be better than I was and tried to help me. At the time I resented it, but now I am very grateful. Thank you.”

Isn’t it unfortunate how many times we must fall before we can begin to understand why? Why must we go down the road ourselves before we learn?

You can tell your child to not touch the hot burner… but reality is, the only way they are going to learn is to touch it and burn their hand!

This is true all the way through life. No matter what examples or warnings people are given, most people don’t learn the lesson until they are knocked flat on their back by it.

* A woman gets diagnosed with bronchial cancer before she stop smoking
* A man has a heart attack before he stops eating donuts for breakfast every day
* A woman goes bankrupt and moves back in with mom and dad before cutting up her credit cards
* A man gets a divorce before he realizes he’s been an inconsiderate jerk for the past decade

Sometimes the smack of hitting bottom is what it takes to actually ‘get’ life’s lessons. I don’t think this is the smartest approach to life, but sometimes people are supposed to fall—it’s the only way they will learn.

Imagine this… what if you could get an entire lifetime of wisdom, absolutely everything you needed to know to live a glamorous, wealthy, happy, healthy and joyful life from someone who proved every theory and lived to more than a hundred years old. What if they wrote every piece of wisdom necessary to live to that same level of success? Would you want to get a hold of that document? Would it change your life?

Probably not.

Wanna know why? Because, like most all wisdom which is almost insipidly simple and embarrassingly obvious, you won’t actually know the poignancy of each statement until you have actually experienced the pain or joy associated with the printed words. In other words, in order for the wisdom to have meaning for you, you have to have lived the words, not just read them.

Hence, sometimes we are just supposed to fall in order to acquire the value of the wisdom earned.
Centenarian Advice—Wisdom from 100 Years of Life

This past weekend I spent time with a friend in Newport Beach, Calif., whose grandfather was the centenarian I mentioned above. His granddad lived to be 102 years old. He was a very wealthy and respected man whose life exemplifies all the qualities above. He was everything most everyone would aspire to be.

When this man was born, life expectancy was 47 years, the American flag had only 45 stars, only 14 percent of homes in the United States had a bathtub, 8 percent had a phone, the average wage was 22 cents an hour and sugar cost 14 cents a pound. He experienced and lived through WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the Great Depression, the Industrial Revolution, the first man on the moon, the Berlin Wall going up and coming down, several stock market crashes, the technology boom, etc.

He did write down the wisdom he acquired and proved during his more than 100-year life. He son put them into a document called 100 Years of Wisdom. The document is only three and a half pages, but contains some of the most profound wisdom you will ever read—if you have the life experience and perspective to appreciate them. Just one of these lessons could radically alter the course of your life. This document has only been shared amongst their family, but he has given me the honor of sharing it with all of you.