If you’ve read my books or listened to me speak, you know I have been through some challenging things, many rooted in my father’s willful absence from my life. Before I came into a real understanding of myself as a Spiritual being, life seemed to be an on-and-off cycle of suffering. I’m not alone—there are a lot of people who feel this way. The thing is, suffering can continue for a long time if we don’t find our way out of it. Sadly, it too often feels that there is no way out.

What made the difference in escaping the misery of my feelings of bitterness and resentment was to turn my focus on my energy. Once I did, I realized that everything is about energy. I like to say that we as human beings are walking bags of energy existing in the universe together. We all shine and move in the world with our own unique energetic output. Critically, that energy can’t help but attract energy similar to itself. This is one of life’s truths pointed out in Plato’s first law of affinity: “like tends toward like.”

So, imagine that I am a bag of energy wandering through the world without any understanding of this law. If my energy output is on a low vibration because I am holding negative emotions, I open myself up to attracting experiences I don’t like that are on that same low vibration. As I discuss in my book, For the Love of My Father, sometimes negative energy deposits are made into our energetic bank accounts when we are children (my father made many deposits!). Those deposits can bring adversity to us as adults. We can then end up walking around like unwitting beacons, signaling blows to enter our lives.

The challenges are, to us, completely unexplainable, but at a deeper level, they are completely explainable. Without understanding what is happening, some of us can become hardened. This, by the way, isn’t helpful because these are just more negative energy deposits in the energetic bank account. Those experiences and feelings only increase our challenges. Often, it is difficult to find things to be positive about. This is even though most of us can find even the tiniest thing to be grateful for.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving and get into the holiday season, I’d like to share that one thing that helped me on my journey was learning to be grateful. Even when we feel we have nothing to be grateful for, the practice is to start with the smallest things (the ability to breathe, having food to eat, a snuggle with our pet) and then work our way up. Then we must continue to work on being grateful until our perception of life shifts and our energy changes.

When your energy changes to a high vibration, then what you attract will change to match that, ushering in new wonderful possibilities and even miracles in your life. Happy Thanksgiving and happy shifting!