FLIP The Gratitude Switch - Review

FLIP The Gratitude Switch: A Simple Formula To Change The Trajectory Of Your Life

By: Kevin Clayson

Publication: August 22nd 2016 by Createspace Independent Publishing

212 pages

Genre: Non-Fiction, Self-Help

Source: Personal Kindle Library

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Goodreads description--This powerful book is the ultimate guide on how to create real happiness in your life, through finding, cultivating, and activating gratitude no matter what your life circumstances may be... and to do it in a way that will change the trajectory of your life.

This book will show you how to make gratitude something you DO not just something you FEEL, and how to change your life quickly, simply and permanently as a result.

Hal Elrod says, "This is the definitive 'gratitude how-to guide,' a timeless classic... and it's a book that the world has needed for a long time."

All it takes is one FLIP... that single moment when you decide that you want to stop thinking about the life you should be living and ACTUALLY START LIVING IT! This highly anticipated new book will show you that the life you want is a lot closer than you think. It's not what happens to us that defines and shapes our lives - it's how we CHOOSE to react to the things that come our way.

There is only one person who gets to decide how happy and contented you feel, how meaningful your relationships are, how much control you have over your life, and how much success you have... and it's you!

Do you want to create success out of failure?

Do you want to feel hopeful about the future?

Do you want your relationships to grow and thrive?

Do you want to live an abundant life no matter what?

Then it's time to stop focusing on the things that happen TO YOU and start being thankful IN YOUR CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES, whatever they may be. It doesn't matter where you are right now or where you've been. You can begin re-writing your story immediately - and guarantee it will have a happy ending - simply by FLIPping the Gratitude Switch with the simple 4-step FLIP Formula!

I'm not sure much puts a mirror in front of you quite like parenting. Seeing little people mirror back to you things you want to change about yourself somehow motivates you to do better. Of course, I feel like I've always tried to work on myself. My Dad always impressed upon me the importance of being teachable. And he didn't just mean in the classroom. But since becoming a mother I feel like I've been on a consistent course to improve myself. I am impatient and selfish and short-tempered. And I don't want to be those things anymore.

In my journey to improvement my parenting, I found Dr. Paul Jenkins YouTube channel, Live on Purpose. I can't recommend his content enough. Dr. Paul is always stressing the importance of gratitude, but beyond the typical "thanks for my family, thanks for the blue sky and the green grass, thanks for indoor plumbing, and air conditioning." And well, I've done gratitude journals in the past, but I never seemed to get passed those things. Kevin Clayson invites you to be grateful for the hard things in life--the challenges.

FLIP the Gratitude Switch is written in four parts. The first part is a parable style. And I can't say that I enjoyed this section as much as the rest of the book. I felt like the story was supposed to be this grand adventure tale that needed to span the entire book's pages to do the adventure justice. The build-up was slow and the parable's conclusion felt rushed. The other parts of the book were more of what I would expect from a non-fiction, self-help book.

Favorite quotes:

-You are powerless to change the past and you are powerless to control the future. The past was then, the future is over there, and you can affect neither of them in this moment. The only time that has any bearing on your life is the present.

-Practice becoming present and waking up to feel the potential of each moment, because it is only in the NOW that you have power to affect the future.

-WITHOUT gratitude, it doesn't matter whether you make $25,000 a year or $2,500,000 a year--it will never be enough. Without gratitude, the kids will always be too loud. Without gratitude, the checkout line will always be too slow. Without gratitude, traffic will always be terrible. Without gratitude, the movie theater popcorn will always be too expensive. Without gratitude, the weather will always be too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry.

-One of the best quotes I've ever heard about gratitude is from a great man and religious leader named David A Bednar. He said, "The gift of Gratitude enables our appreciation for what we have to constrain desires for what we want. A grateful person is rich in contentment. An ungrateful person suffers in the poverty of endless disappointment."

-No matter how righteous you attempt to be, counterfeit happiness is always no more than a step away--and it will always appear to be instantly accessible and glistening with the shiny promise of a better life.

-There is success embedded in every failure. Without gratitude, failure is nothing more than disappointment. There is joy embedded in despair. Without gratitude, despair is nothing more than a hole left unfilled. There is hope embedded in tragedy. Without gratitude, tragedy is nothing more than loss of hope. There is healing embedded in pain. Without gratitude, pain is simply unnecessary. There is new beginning embedded in every ending. Without gratitude, endings are always final.

-Each time, after discovering and acknowledging a frustration, I located something I could feel grateful for embedded within the frustration. Then I would choose to pause for a moment and actually experience gratitude for it.

-YOU CAN MAKE GRATITUDE AN ACTIVE, DAILY OCCURENCE... NOT BY BEING GRATEFUL FOR THE STUFF THAT'S ALREADY GOOD, BUT BY FINDING THE "GOOD" EMBEDDED WITHIN THE "BAD" AND BECOMING THANKFUL FOR THAT.

-We need to stop thinking of gratitude as a touchy feely emotion that washes over us from time to time. We also need to stop thinking that gratitude is just a sensation we get when things go well.

-I'm suggesting that instead of being thankful for things, we focus on being thankful in our circumstances--whatever they may be.

-From where I sit, it seems that we are a nation and really a human family, full of way too many Eeyores. We have a tendency to expect the worst, think negatively, and constantly speak words of pessimism into our lives.

-There is a difference between always living in the future and hoping life will get better someday and beginning to live in the present and acknowledging that life is pretty great right now.

-It is the simple, daily, conscious decision to enact gratitude during the most frustrating times of the day--FLIPping The Gratitude Switch--that allows you to illuminate life's challenges, create more happiness, increase life fulfillment, drive more success, and ultimately deliver total control over all aspects of your life.

-What does the choice to feel the frustration, anger, and annoyance get anyone? Absolutely nothing but anger, frustration, and annoyance.

-You are the only one responsible for how you react to your reality! Even if situations arise over which you had no control, then you are still 100 percent responsible for how you choose to react and feel about the situation.

-And here's the best part: When you take responsibility for your frustrations (whether or not you were the cause), you gain control of them.

-Feeling good and having gratitude for things that are already awesome is important. But it also doesn't require any effort--and it definitely doesn't require any sort of mental shift.

-Sometimes we can't control the big stuff; things just happen. What we can control are the little moments surrounding the big stuff. We can find little moments to be thankful and to discover the awesome in some aspects of our life at the moment that the big stuff is happening.

-Imagine a glass partially filled with water. With certain lenses on, the glass may either look half empty or half full, but I want you to consider viewing the glass differently. What if the glass isn't half empty OR half full? What if the amount of liquid in that glass, regardless of whether it is a drop or a gallon, is simply ENOUGH? There MAY be times when the glass becomes completely drained. Even then, never should that glass be viewed as empty--it should only ever be viewed as refillable.

Those quotes are really just a taste of the content of FLIP the Gratitude Switch. I need these principles in my life. I need to increase my gratitude. And I have not arrived. I still get impatient and short-tempered, but I realize that I'm viewing things from an improper perspective and I seek to find the good in the moments. I am doing better about being grateful for the hard things, the challenges, and life's frustrations. I will probably need to re-read these principles over and over. FLIP the Gratitude Switch gets 4.5 Stars only because I didn't enjoy the parable portion of the book as much as the rest. Have you read FLIP the Gratitude Switch? What did you think? Let me know!