Gratitude shouldn't be reserved for just special occasions. Showing appreciation for what you have can improve your life year-round. With so much negativity in the world, it can be difficult not to become cynical. Sometimes you find yourself surviving rather than thriving, and gratitude becomes an afterthought. All too often, you base your happiness and gratitude on our circumstances.
The truth is that if you can’t find happiness and be grateful in the small things in life, chances are you won’t find it in the larger things either. Find three things each day to be grateful for. In your morning routine take five minutes to write these items down (electronically or manually), and say them out loud. Recording it makes it more real rather than abstract concepts living in your mind. You will automatically start to see life more optimistically. Gratefulness will even happen in life’s negative situations. At first, you may feel like you’re forcing it.
Start with things you take for granted. Be grateful that you are alive and breathing, have clean water to drink, clothes to wear, and food to eat. Starting with the obvious is the beginning of practicing gratitude. Once you’ve taken the first step, it will soon become a good habit. Gratitude is the most direct pathway to both success and happiness. It can change your life because you will appreciate what you have rather than what you don’t have. Unbelievable benefits will begin to happen for you over time with gratitude. Below are powerful ways gratitude can transform your existence:
Gratitude
emboldens you to reach for your goals-When
you set goals the right way, you can quite literally achieve anything you put
your mind to. It won’t happen overnight, in weeks, or months, but in years of
consistent and persistent gratitude actions. Gratitude helps you to succeed by
first creating a platform of internal success. As long as you’re in harmony in
your mind, body and spirit, you can reach for your goals.
When
you lack joy in your life, and live in a status of negativity, it can be more
difficult to move forward. When you’re focused on things that are incorrect
with your life, how can you possibly press on untiringly towards goals that are
potentially years away from becoming a reality? You can’t. In fact, what tends
to happen is that you get distracted, waste time, and engage in pursuits that
hinder you rather than help you.
Gratitude improves the quality of your life-From
your mental health and wellness, to your emotional fortitude, spiritual
aptitude, and your physical strength can all be derived from the simple and
basic behavior of gratitude. Gratitude can change your life by literally
improving the quality of it. You’re the sum of all your parts, and it’s
gratitude that can help to benefit each of those small parts. Studies have
uniquely linked gratitude with satisfaction of life and it’s no secret that people who are grateful for things
are far more satisfied in their lives.
There’s a sound stability that exists when you can
appreciate the importance of things in your life, no matter what shape, size,
or form factor it might take on. Many people think that it’s easy for successful
people to be grateful because they have so much to be grateful for. Material
possessions do help to improve the quality of your life, but money can also
mean more problems. Gratitude isn’t about having lots of money. Gratitude must
prelude the attainment of large sums of money. When it doesn’t, people can lose
it. There’s something called Sudden Wealth Syndrome that can set in, and it’s easy to see why so many lottery
winners and inheritance recipients go bankrupt in a very short period after the
windfall of cash arrives.
Gratitude
shifts your focus-Life is all about focus. Whatever you
focus on you move towards. When you lived in a state of negativity, you see
more of that. It’s easy to see something in a negative light when you’re
focused on that. It’s easy to see all the dilemmas surrounding a situation when
your thinking is habitually geared towards that. In turn, it’s also easy to see
things in a positive light, even when problems arise. If you’ve ever met an
always-positive person, you know just how true this statement is.
Even
when something goes wrong, they look for the best in the situation. If they
can’t find one, they simply state that something good will eventually come out
of whatever they’re going through. But it’s not just about being a positive
person; having gratitude can change your life because it breathes positivity
into everything you’re doing. It’s a monumental shift in focus, a new way of
seeing things, one that involves complete appreciation for the beauty of all
things. You move from living in a state of need to living in a condition of
sheer abundance in every possible way. This doesn’t happen overnight. This
shift in focus requires time and a habitual retraining of the mind, but it will
occur in time.
Gratitude strengthens and enhances your faith-Depending
the faith (or religion) you believe in whether it’s God (or the spiritual
oneness that binds you to each other), gratitude can strengthen and enhance
your faith or belief. There’s a deep-rooted appreciation for things that arise
for those that are grateful. It becomes baked into the very fabric of their
being. In turn, it strengthens their conviction in all things. It’s my belief
in God and the realization that I am truly and completely grateful for
everything in my life (including all my problems). Gratitude transforms your
faith by instilling the belief that you’re not alone.
Whatever
it is that you’re going through, it will pass, and on the other end you’ll
emerge victorious. You’ll accomplish your goals, overcome your obstacles, and
become a better person, one who’s more sympathetic and even empathetic to the
dilemma of others. As a result of all of this, you’ll seek out ways you can
contribute to society and your fellow man, woman and child. You’ll search for
opportunities because you realize that what you have truly is enough and that
the focus must become helping others. That’s when true spiritual enlightenment
begins.
Gratitude gives
you peace of mind-There’s an inner belief that
develops when you’re truly grateful for things. It provides sound peace of mind
that doesn’t exist when you live with the expectation of certain things. If
you’ve ever noticed people who expect certain things out of life, or who
attempt to bend the will of others for their personal advancement, you’ll find weak-minded
individuals who don’t make it far in life.
There’s
a respect that develops for those that can stay humble in the midst of success,
fame, or stardom. Humility is an existing attribute of many of the most successful people in the world because they’ve had to endure and recover from the heartache
of defeat. They’ve become grateful by not
taking things for granted. There’s a certain empathetic nature that’s instilled
in the hearts of successful people who had to endure a lot of failure before
tasting the sweet victory of success. It all started with an attitude of
gratitude that instilled sound peace of mind. It was from that platform that
triumph was developed not through deceitful behavior.
Gratitude makes you feel happier-In
one study; researchers asked a group of people to write a few sentences every
week about a particular topic. One group was instructed to write about things
that didn’t make them happy. Another was instructed to write about things that
they were grateful for. The control group was instructed to write about things
that had occurred but with no focus towards being positive or negative. Here
are the results. The group that was instructed to write about things that they
were grateful for was happier and optimistic about their lives than the group
that had focused on things that had occurred in a negative light.
It’s far easier to go about your day in a state of
appreciation when you’re grateful than when you’re not. This isn’t always easy
to do because you all have a Hedonic Set Point, or a baseline level of happiness. When that threshold is
crossed one way or another, you become either unhappy or happy. This is also
referred to as the Hedonic Treadmill, often related to the incessant drive to
accumulate things that only bring momentary bliss but don’t offer sustained
happiness.
Gratitude reduces your innermost fears-One
clear way that gratitude can change your life is by reducing your fears because
it’s hard to be fearful and grateful at the same time. Fear is what occurs when
you’re left to dwell on topics that you feel are out of our control. You imagine
the worst-possible scenarios and picture your future troubles when you’re
living in a state of fear. But by being grateful, fear can be overcome. When you’re
utterly grateful for everything you have, including your problems, fear has
little place to live in your mind. When you’re fearful of things that put you
into a state of scarcity, such as not having enough money to pay our bills or buying
groceries, you’re living in a state of need rather than a state of abundance.
Being
grateful, however, puts you into a state of abundance. It instills the belief
that you’re grateful for what you have, right now in this very moment rather
than worrying about what you don’t have or won’t have at some future point in
time. Often, you save your gratitude for one holiday of the year (Thanksgiving).
On that day, you question yourself about not being grateful every other day of
the year. Why does it take a day that’s set aside for giving thanks to stop and
do it? Decide, right now, that you’ll create the daily habit of gratitude.
“Thankfulness is
the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness.
Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts.” (Henri
Frederic Amiel)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“7 Crucial Reasons Why
Gratitude Can Change Your Life” by Wanderlust Worker
·
“9 Powerful Ways Gratitude Can Change Your Life” by Amy Morin
·
“Gratitude
Can Change Your Life” by Phyllis Romero
This
topic was suggested by friend and blog member, Pam Nowicki.
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