Q&A: I Am Being Grateful But When Will This Change?

Dear Jennifer:  For the past few years I have been practicing mindfulness and gratitude and it has changed my life. I am now are of the present moment and staying positive. But I need a new job, my living situation is not ideal and the money is dwindling. While I know it’s better stay positive, be grateful for what you have, I don’t know how I am going to continue. Being rejected for jobs all the time, seeing the money dwindle, it is getting harder and harder to stay positive all of the time. How do I change this without being ungrateful?

Jennifer’s Answer:  As I read your question I feel like I’m part of the orchestra playing on the deck of the Titanic. I think it’s time for you to find a rowboat. You have confused appreciation with responsibility, and gratitude with value. While it is great to be in appreciation of the present moment, it’s also best to use that information as the springboard for the next step. You are responsible for creating it but you are also responsible for changing it and that in no way interferes with gratitude and appreciation. You have to be able to appreciate it as a lesson but then take responsibility for changing it by taking action. You’re stuck in gratitude and inaction and if you do not pull up quickly, you will go ‘down with the ship’ so to speak.

The reason you can’t find a job right now is that while you’re grateful for the situation, you don’t see the real reason for its existence, to teach you about your value and self worth. Acknowledge how scared and limited you feel in this situation but don’t be grateful for it. Are you angry with yourself and scared that you will be totally powerless? Has this happened to you before?  Do you find it harder and harder to feel valuable and worthy of something better as you watch the money slip away? When you apply for a job, do you feel desperate and are at the point where you will take anything, even if it’s not right for you?

The first step is to stop the bleeding and I mean on an energetic level. Stop being grateful that you’re broke and unemployed. Instead, be grateful for the lesson in value and self worth, take responsibility for creating it, and then start setting an intention for what you want instead. This can turn around in an instant but not until you can believe that you deserve to have a great job or work, money, to have a fabulous living situation and to be safe, secure and happy with and in your life. Be grateful for those things, even though  they are not in your life yet because that is what will attract them to you.

I know, it sounds silly, how can you be grateful for what you do not have? But if you don’t create the energetic space for it, you are not going to change the situation any time soon, and you need for it to change now. Accept responsibility for what you have created because it mirrors your value and self worth and also your fear around success. Now, acknowledge that you want something else. If you sit around and thank the Universe for being broke and unemployed with a frozen smile on your face, hoping that by being grateful for it the Universe will step in and change it for you, that will not happen.

Acknowledge that you created this because you didn’t ask for enough or didn’t believe you deserved more. Now ask for a lot more and believe that you deserve to have it (some pretending may have to happen here, but it’s all an illusion anyway), and use affirmations or any kind of positive reinforcement to need to keep yourself aligned with that intention. Apply for the jobs you are qualified for and really want, not what you think you can get. See yourself with plenty of money, food in your house, clothes, money for rent, and anything else you want, that is how you create it.

Is your situation urgent? Then believe that your resolution will happen immediately (there is no time in the Universe) and allow that to happen. Miracles are simply a shift in energy from one level to another. You’re at the broke and unemployed level, get yourself to the rich and working level by shifting your gratitude focus. You can create anything in your life but there has to be space for it and right now, your energetic space is occupied with being grateful that you are ‘broke and unemployed’.  Set your intention for what you want to create space for your new, more powerful, affluent and employed self, believe it will happen and then be willing to receive it and it will happen.