Meditation for gratitude and forgiveness.

Lori Saitz is the CEO of Zen Rabbit and host of the podcast “FINE is a 4-Letter Word.” She’s an award-winning writer, speaker, and broadcaster, and a nationally recognized expert in using gratitude and meditation to manifest goals faster. Lori has over twenty-five years experience in marketing and is now teaching the concept of gratitude and meditation. Her mission is to teach the world to become grounded no matter what is going on around them. This means taking a pause to respond to situations instead of jumping straight away by reacting as though your hair is on fire - which seems to be the way the world works right now.

There is an overwhelm of information being thrown at us on a daily basis. The amount of information we are exposed to every day is the equivalent of what our grandparents were exposed to over their entire lifetime. We have not evolved to the point where we can process all this efficiently and discern what’s true, what not true, what do I need to pay attention to or what can I ignore.

In a busy world where there is a lot going on around us we are often told that we need to spend a lot of time meditating each day. Lori doesn't agree with this. There is no one right way to meditate there are many. It’s about finding the thing that works for you. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. You could spend just ten minutes and she sees this more as an investment of time because meditation helps you be more focused and productive so fifteen minutes meditating is actually buying yourself time.

Research and science shows that meditation actually enhances creativity so you can come at a problem with several different angles and be more creative about solving it. It decreases anxiety and in a more relaxed state you are open to getting more insights and having more breakthroughs. The other thing that meditation can do is enhance emotional intelligence which makes you more empathetic, less likely to act impulsively and get frustrated in an emotionally charged situation and make interactions easier.

Gratitude is another powerful way to reprogramme your brain because you are strengthening your neural pathways. When you are practicing gratitude they get stronger. The more your can find gratitude for what’s happening in your world the stronger the neural pathways will become. The brain chemistry actually changes. Feelgood chemicals like dopamine increase and cortisol the stress hormone reduces so you can get a reduction in physical pain and an increase in the effectiveness of your immune system.

On a practical everyday basis, we live in a world that loves complaining and criticising When you want to become more grateful recognise when you are complaining or criticising and add on this phrase – but I’m grateful for it. The more you do that, the more proactive you get into doing that the more you will catch yourself and naturally start seeing more things to be grateful for. Sometimes it’s had to find the greater good about a situation until you are a little more removed from it but you can still find some element of gratitude in it.

Forgiveness is releasing gratitude within yourself. Again can you find gratitude in a situation where someone has wronged you?  By allowing forgiveness nothing changes for the other person but everything changes within you. Forgiveness doesn’t absolve the other person from their guilt rather its actually forgiving yourself. You have to be able to learn the lesson – if you can find gratitude for that situation then again you’re giving yourself that piece of mind and sense of calm.

You can find out more about Lori at https://zenrabbit.com/

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