Gary Young’s 5 Ways to live with Gratitude
21.08.2020
I want to dedicate this bulletin to Gary Young, the Founder of Young Living, and the Father of the Modern Day Essential Oil Movement. We would not have essential oils in our homes the way we do today if it were not for Gary. He was an amazing man and a true pioneer, and his legacy continues to thrive in Young Living today.
Gary knew about hardship. At age 24 he was paralysed in a logging accident and told he’d never walk again. There were many times in those early days that he wanted to leave the planet, because he couldn’t imagine life in a wheelchair. But he used sheer perseverance and faith, and he DID get to walk again…and more than just walk. He placed 60th out of over 1000 people when he ran a half-marathon, 13 years after his initial accident. Now that’s a miracle!
So Gary has a lot he can teach us about attitude, life, perseverance and winning. My friend Jen Gallagher has been pouring over years and years of notes from Gary’s seminars, and compiling his gems of wisdom around emotions and essential oils. I’m delighted to share them with you in our bulletins.
Jen Gallagher writes: I had the fortune to spend time with Gary Young in France. He’d invited a bunch of us to join him for a special event, and to explore the early foundations of Young Living as he took us on a tour to meet the people and places that had influenced his early discoveries around essential oils.
On that trip, I asked him one of those burning questions that I had on my mind, about sustainability of essential oils. The answers he gave me made me realize how amazing this company is.
Everything I experience when I use the Young Living oils is backed up by Gary really thinking about where and how Young Living sources oils…not only where to obtain the highest quality (which country, which region, which climate, which rainfall, which farming practices), but also how do we ensure that this oil is produced sustainably, so we will have essential oils available to us for our whole lifetime, and beyond.
It was just amazing to have that discussion with him, and to hear his ethics and his passion for oils – straight from the horse’s mouth.
Gary Young’s 5 ways to live life with Gratitude…
Life was not meant to be one straight road and you just follow it. It really is complicated – you need to find your own way, and one of the things that Gary constantly talked about was finding gratitude in everything we do.
He used to say that to create a great life, we have to create a deeper gratitude – the kind that imbues the past with PEACE and the future with HOPE.
Here are 5 tips he gave us for cultivating gratitude, even in the most difficult times:
1. Forgive and Thank
We struggle to forgive our own mistakes and also those of others. This is why Gary created the blend Forgiveness.
“If someone is struggling with something, go and look at the names of our essential oil blends, because the names will tell you what is literally in that bottle waiting for you.”
The fragrance of our Forgiveness oil blend stimulates our mind to move past the trauma, the problems and and our feeling of being a victim. You don’t even need the other person to be present. It is really what you do that creates that forgiveness, energetically.
I have a lady I know who had not spoken to her brother in a long time. She came to me for an Emotional Clearing Technique, and we used Forgiveness oil on her. She went home and out of the blue the next day, her brother called her. This is what Gary is talking about when he says the person does not need to be present. It is a shift in your energy and your willingness to forgive the other person (or yourself). Until you have forgiven yourself, it’s very hard to forgive others.
2. Adjust your Paradigm
The next step in cultivating Gratitude is adjusting your Paradigm.
Gary said, “We spend our energy locked up in limiting and unproductive choices, but life is a grand journey and we can be whatever we choose to be. So it is about making that choice and committing to it.”
This road we’re traveling is not a flat, even, straight road. It is full of ups and downs, backwards and forwards, sideways, round the corner, back around, down, up, and everywhere. This is just the way life is. Some of us obviously have bigger ups, bigger downs, but we all have them and we all have our own journey within, so we will never know how the other person feels.
So it is really about what you do that makes the difference. It is not about what the other person does, because you cannot change anybody. Try as much as you want to, you cannot make anyone do anything. The only thing you can do is change your own perception and your own Being, and watch how that changes your experiences.
3. Dream (and be glad you can!)
Gary was a very spiritual man. He thanked God often for the gift of dreaming, and he used to talk a lot about the dreams he had about the oils.
I remember him talking about a particular technique that he developed with Frankincense, and how that came to him in a dream, and how he got up in the middle of the night.
There is something that makes the world of energy – call it God, the Universe, Higher Power, Universal Energy. There is some force at work, because something has to be beating our hearts and allowing us to breathe. When Gary was in his wheelchair and he had a paralyzed body and lots of pain, he started thanking God for that gift and then thanking God for his dreams.
If he did not have that accident, Young Living would have never existed. I am sure you could look back on your life and think, “Wow, you know that thing that happened to me? Well if that did not happen then this next thing would not have happened, and then that would not have happened, and so on.”
It is like a domino effect, so we really have to be glad for the gift that we receive, as hard and as painful as it can be sometimes, you wouldn’t be the person you are without those things happening in your life.
4. See the clouds for what they are
Gary said life can change from moment to moment, just as nature changes. As the clouds move into our lives, they obscure the vision of brightness and beauty that is there before us. We are programmed to stare into the clouds of our minds, and start reflecting on the past. And before we realize it, we’re spiralling downwards.
Gary says, “Remember that the clouds bring snow and rain, and what do snow and rain do? They cleanse the atmosphere, they refresh the air we breathe and they provide water for our crops and replenish our streams. Without the clouds, we would not have the nourishment that we need to sustain ourselves. When clouds obscure our mind we retreat into fear and then we make unproductive choices that we later regret. We have to be aware of that, and see the greater vision that is there in front of us.”
Have you ever seen how when you smile, someone around you also smiles? You are laughing and everybody is laughing!
Have you ever gone through the check-out at the supermarket, and you’re like “Hi! How are you doing?” and the person behind the counter suddenly smiles and you see them waking up, because everyone else is just ignoring them as they go through. And suddenly you’ve really seen them, and they feel noticed and valued and they give you a big smile back. You can feel it in your being when you’ve brightened someone else’s day.
Gary says to be aware of what your attitude is, and choose it, because it is going to impact others. You have a choice to use a little bit of effort to cultivate gratitude. Be contagiously positive, so that everyone can feel better for that.
This 3.5 minute video will give you goosebumps. It was made after Gary had already passed from his body, so although there’s a brief clip of him on a tractor at the end, his teenage self is played by his son Jacob, and his younger and adult self is played by other people. The message in this video is a profound one of courage and determination. May it brighten your day, and remind you that although life does have its often difficult twists and turns, it is also what we make of it that is important. That is how we leave our mark on the world….
Want to try some of Gary’s oils? Here’s how to order….
If you already have your own wholesale account with Young Living, order through the shopping cart on your virtual office, or via phone with your local Young Living office. If it’s been more than 12 months since you’ve ordered, or if you’ve never set up an account, reach out to the person who introduced you to Young Living. You’ll need their member number when you place your first order.
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