Gratitude is a powerful way of conditioning your subconscious mind for success. Gratitude fulfills the law of multiplication. Whatever you genuinely feel grateful for, you multiply in your life. Therein lies the secret of abundance and prosperity.

Think about it - when you give a gift to someone and that person shows deep genuine gratitude for the gift, you feel so good that you want to share another gift - just so you can see a glow in that person's eyes and delight in the opportunity to make a difference in someone's life.

Well, the universe, or life in general, works exactly in the same way. As you feel a deep sense of gratitude, you begin to release that wonderful vibration that draws into your life countless blessings.

So many people focus on what they do not have and in this way further program their subconscious minds with the idea and feeling of lack and loss. And guess what? That is exactly what they keep on enhancing in their lives. In time, this turns into a habit of expecting lack and fearing loss. Some people then embark on a journey of looking for further proofs that life consists of meaningless struggles, so they abandon all effort to make something out of their lives and instead keep on acting in ways that actually invite more losses and dismal experiences. Then they wonder why they feel depressed.

Here are 4 easy steps toward experiencing the power of gratitude:

1. Take some time to think about the things, people and circumstances that are truly beneficial to you and that are enriching your life now or have enriched your life in the past and feel a sense of deep gratitude for those blessings.

2. There may be things, people and circumstances that are beneficial to you, but which you took for granted because they've been such an intrinsic part of your life that you're not even aware of their wonderfulness and usefulness in your life - such as the air that you breathe, the bed on which you sleep, the clothes that you wear, maybe even your family and friends. Think about the living spirit that animates your body, the wonderful mind that you have. Feel a sense of deep gratitude for those things, people and circumstances which are enriching your life every day, but which you might have taken for granted.

3. We may find it more challenging to feel gratitude for dismal experiences; for people and situations that brought us pain and discomfort; for people who pushed us to challenge ourselves, to reach deeper within and discover incredible resources within ourselves, untapped powers we did not even know we had; for people who pushed us to develop new skills, skills that have tremendously enriched our lives, skills that have enabled us not only to emerge victorious out of our own struggle, but also to be of greater service to others. No one may be better equipped to help a person going through a challenging experience than someone who has already been there, experienced it, and knows.

Perhaps you can recall now some experiences you wished you didn't have to endure and now consider for a moment what have you learned from those experiences, how have those experiences enriched your life, how have they helped you to become more resourceful, stronger, perhaps even a better human being.

4. Now, go one step further and think of those things you'd like to have in your life - feel how you would feel having them right now and express gratitude for them as if you already have them. Gratitude is the fastest way to draw those experiences into your life.

When you feel gratitude for something, you acknowledge that you have already received it. You program this desirable experience as your reality into your subconscious mind. You expect this experience to happen, you begin looking for manifestations of that experience in your life, you begin acting as if it were true, and you begin experiencing what may be nothing short of a miracle.

Remember that you program your subconscious mind by what you FEEL to be REAL for you NOW! When you express gratitude for something you would like to have or experience as if it were already yours, you CLAIM it as YOURS and you open the way for it to come into your life!