Eight Words to Keep Your Attention Where it Needs to Be

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 acknowledgment 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 acknowledgment 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.

So here are some examples of how I use this eight word prayer in an average day:

- I wake up

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now" I have a new day in front of me and can create of it anything I choose.

- I do some form of exercise

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." What an amazing thing this physical body is. Notice how it moves magnificently, how the ever present breath of life is drawn in effortlessly almost as if I am being breathed instead of doing the breathing. I feel the energy that is stagnant upon waking, begin to flow and radiate as I move and breathe. What a gift this body is- though temporary and mortal- perfect for the purpose it was created for. And what did I do to "earn it"? Nothing- other than choosing at some point to come here to earth to be in it for a while. So I have a sacred stewardship to care for this body- to maintain it in good health through my creative choices to exercise it and feed it with positive energy (breath, thought, and food and water). Instead of letting my mind wander to the tasks of the day or flitter around in its self created projections of past or future, I am reminded to keep my attention here now, in the body, in the breath.

- I help get the kids off to school.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." How lucky am I to have a beautiful wife and five wonderful children. How fleeting is time and how soon will these children be grown and not here. But they are Here, Now and I can enjoy this age and this day. Through the hustle and bustle of gathering books in backpacks, signing some form for a teacher, packing lunches, having family prayer, eating breakfast, reminding them to empty the dishwasher, and waving good bye, I feel a deep sense of gratitude and joy.

- I face a challenge at work. Something that I had planned on falls apart and doesn't go my way.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." Even though something isn't currently going the way I planned, I am grateful to have the opportunity to be doing this work, and not be sick in bed, or incapacitated mentally or physically. I have a chance to test my creative muscle instead of going unconscious and reacting with anger, worry or fear. What opportunity is being presented here? What lesson is being taught?

- I have lunch with a friend.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." I focus my attention on the person in front of me- really listening to them and genuinely curious about what they are going through right now. As my attention wants to pull away from here, now to things I have to do later (in the future), I use my will to keep my attention focused here, now. I try to be fully present with that person while I am with them.

- After dinner, my 4 year old wants to play outside with me.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." I try to see the world through his eyes. My attention wants to move on to "more important" things, or more pressing things than pushing a tire swing or kicking a soccer ball. Again, I have an opportunity to stay here, now and keep my attention focused on my 4 year old. There will be a better time to think about the challenges of the day and the to do list of tomorrow. This is a much more fleeting opportunity to be fully present with my son right now, right here in front of me. His playfulness is contagious and I laugh out loud.

- Later that night two of the boys start fighting over something and it goes to full out punching and kicking.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." Emotions are running high- reactions are on automatic with the boys- no space between stimulus and response- unconscious reacting. Thank You Father that I can see that now- I'm sure there were many times when I was a boy that I couldn't and I was reacting just like I am witnessing by boys react here, now. I know that this will soon pass and I can watch with a healthy level of amusement and detachment. What a golden teaching opportunity there is here too! A smile in my heart and on my face as I pull them apart and encourage them to take some deep breaths. Some questions to ask: "How does it feel to be on auto-reaction pilot instead of in control?" "You hate your brother, is that really true?" "What could you do differently next time to avoid this?" I know that much of the teaching moment will be lost on them right now, but I also know that somewhere- it's being recorded and stored and will have an impact, and someday all too soon, they will be watching their own boys pulling punches over something and have the same smile in their heart and on the faces as they pull them apart.

I take a walk around the neighborhood with my wife after dinner.

"Thank You Father That I Am Here Now." What a beautiful evening. The air is cool, the breeze is fragrant with the sweet smell of orange blossoms in bloom. We hold hands and breath together and move together and talk together. It dawns on me that I am already in heaven- here, now. Thank You Father!

To me this is what it means to "pray always." I never really understood what that meant until I received this prayer and started using it. Of course like all great truths, there are many meanings to the principle of "pray always", but this is one meaning that I have found to be very practical and useful in my daily living.

Now what about when something really bad happens? A child is seriously injured. A business fails. A lower back disc slips and causes extreme pain for months. These are a few of the tougher challenges I've had to face personally and the little eight word prayer has helped me through those times. Fortunately that's about the worst that has happened to me personally. If anything "worse" happens in the future, I hope that the habit I have made of saying this prayer throughout the day, every day will carry me through even the toughest of times. I have learned by my own experience that this eight word prayer has the power to transform anything I've experienced thus far into a positive. That doesn't mean there aren't things that are bad or that I may wish were different, but it does mean that I can choose to create a positive meaning to anything that happens.

What are you going through now? Try it for a few days and see if it helps you to feel more gratitude in your life.

Thank You Father That I Am Here Now.