What does it mean for you to appreciate someone or something and how does it feel when you are appreciated? Appreciation is more than having gratitude or giving thanks. It’s also grasping the nature, worth and significance of, having a sensitive awareness and approval of, and growing the value of persons, places, situations and things. It’s an expression of a desire to expand the best of that which is valued. It’s the opposite of depreciation.

What if we would trade our expectations and judgements for appreciation? Try it and see. My experience is that our world changes instantly. In appreciation we take the best, raise it up, grow it, value it and leave the rest. Rather than lifting up what we don’t like, we lift up what we do like, enhance it and help to make it grow. It’s a powerful tool that shifts our perspective and creates more of what we really want rather than what we don’t.

When we focus on what we don’t like or don’t want, we picture and create a small world of constriction and depreciation. Our world gets smaller and so do we. On the other hand, when we focus on what we do like and want; beauty, wisdom, love, acceptance, joy, peace and prosperity, we create a big world of expansion and appreciation. Our thoughts and feelings actually appreciate and depreciate what we focus on. Are you focusing on appreciation?

Let’s run a little experiment. . . How do you feel when someone puts you down? Do you feel mad, sad, glad, afraid or some combination of these? Would you say that mad, sad, and afraid are depreciating or appreciating? You can also turn this around to look at what your words, thoughts and actions do for another. This exercise helps us all experience the simple difference between appreciation and depreciation in our lives. Our feelings become our guidance system.

We’re now living in a time of chaos and confusion where depreciation is on the rise at all levels of human interaction. We finally have the skeletons of prejudice out of the closet and are now having to deal with them which is both positive and negative. The wonder of living in a time like this is that we have the choice to live in the danger of depreciation or the opportunity of appreciation. Are we going to take the best of what we are and help to make it grow, appreciate it,  or are we going to stunt our growth by depreciating it?

From the personality’s point of view we develop judgment. From the soul’s point of view we develop appreciation. Joseph Rain says: “As our awareness and understanding of the world increases, we will grow to replace fear with love, abundance and appreciation.” It becomes a matter of choice. My discovery is that as we appreciate the simple things, the little things, feeling soulfully with the heart, they turn out to be the biggest most life giving things. How about you?

• Continue today’s experiment for the next month. Listen for the appreciating and depreciating feelings. Allow yourself to feel the effects of both. Play with growing your appreciation for all.

• Work and play with the reality that love, joy and peace are not something you do, rather they are something you ARE. Focus on feeling appreciated and appreciating. Experiment with living in this space and feel your way into it repeatedly. Remember to Remember who you Are.