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Being grateful is an easy feeling but we mostly forget what it means. We are grateful when someone makes us a cup of tea but are we grateful when we breathe clean air?
We are full of gratitude only when a long-awaited moment arrives in our lives. We hear every other day to be grateful in different contexts but do not often understand what it means.
Learning to live with gratitude is a habit and is worth practicing. It allows us to highlight those basic things we may have overlooked or taken for granted that are powerful enough to lift us out on a gloomy day.
Even when you feel you have nothing in life, there will be something near you or something you have experienced that you can be thankful for.
It may seem small and insignificant, but it is worth it. It could just be like the seed that eventually becomes a mighty tree.
"I have a lot to be thankful for. I am healthy, happy and I am loved."
Reba McEntire
Why Should I Be Grateful?
Develop a habit to focus on what you have and appreciate your blessings. It helps you to:
- Be happier: Imagine focusing on two negatives that didn't go well in your life versus ten blessings that are constantly with you, something 50% of the people on this earth are already praying for.
- Enhance your positive emotions: Makes you happy, calm, cheery, and joyful. Why stress over something you don't have and neglect something you already have?
- Reduce stress levels: Why stress over something you don't have and always work to achieve it?
- Enhances your decision-making: This is very important because while you focus on things you have, it gives ample time for you to strategize and work over things on your bucket list.
Gratitude can change your brain and makes you more happier person. There are a lot more benefits of Gratitude that you can see here.
Things You Should Be Grateful For
- Family: having a family to turn to in times of need, to support and encourage you, and to share love and life experiences with.
- Health: having the ability to move freely, enjoy life and take part in activities with loved ones.
- Freedom: being able to make choices and decisions in life and having the opportunity to pursue different paths.
- Nature: the beauty of the world around us, from the forests and mountains to the oceans and sky.
- Education: having the chance to learn and expand our knowledge.
- Joy: the happiness and pleasure that comes from moments of joy with friends and family.
- Laughter: the ability to let go and find humour in life.
- Opportunity: the potential to create and shape our own destiny.
- Kindness: the compassion and understanding that comes from showing respect and care for others.
- Love: the powerful emotion of feeling connected to someone, and being able to share experiences and feelings with them.
- Friendship: having people in our lives who we can rely on, trust and rely on.
- Faith: believing in something bigger than ourselves, and finding comfort in the knowledge that we are not alone.
- Music: the joy that comes from listening to music, and the power it has to lift our spirits and bring us peace.
- Compassion: understanding and being empathetic towards others and their struggles.
- Forgiveness: the ability to let go of hurt and anger and move forward with our lives.
- Creativity: the power of expressing ourselves through art, music and writing.
- Adventure: the thrill of discovering and exploring new places and cultures.
- Technology: the convenience and access to information that technology offers us.
- Gratitude: being mindful of the blessings in our lives and showing appreciation for the good that we have.
- Hope: the belief that better days lie ahead and that we can create a brighter future.
Be Thankful For Yourself, Your Body, Your Life
It all starts with gratitude for our bodies, something we had very little of growing up. Now we are in awe of the human body, which turned out to be the incredible machine, unrivaled by any invention.
It can self-heal, grow, change, move, and create, but we have to love it first. Think great thoughts about the amazing body you have, dream of what it can do, and thank it for all it has given.
It may seem slightly odd to talk to yourself in the mirror each day but, if it helps, why not? Try giving yourself a pep talk every day to boost your confidence and make you stop and realize how brilliant you are.
Hence, be grateful for your body for:
- Taking you to all adventures of life, including mountains, city tours, and a dance floor where you danced without care or concern.
- The energy it granted you and the places it got you.
- Stretching and expanding, and changing your perspective of what you are capable of.
- Working together in all the biggest game-changing moments in all your relationships.
- Delicious food that makes you enjoy and gets converted into energy to generate numerous ideas for living your life.
- Withstanding heartaches, sorrow, over-excitement, and overcoming illness and exhaustion.
Be Thankful For Your Family
Give thanks to the gang you are born in, whether it's your blood family or a tribe you have chosen to be a part of. Be grateful for the ones that make you laugh, the ones that challenge you the most, and the power your combined love can offer.
It's important to understand that love cements all the foundations no matter what is going on in your family. Each member of your family was born from love and had it pumping through their being, whether they show it or not.
Lean into that love, encourage that love, and give it right back.
We all experience tough moments with family members sometimes. With honest communication and positive approaches to potential conflict situations, peace, and love are found within families.
You have to be grateful for everything they have done for you and acknowledge the happiness their support can bring.
Your partner is also important part of your family. You should be thankful for everything they do for you without wanting anything in return. Don't forget to tell them that you love them.
"Family is a unique gift that needs to be appreciated and treasured, even when they’re driving you crazy. As much as they make you mad, interrupt you, annoy you, curse at you, try to control you, these are the people who know you the best and who love you."
Jenna Morasca
Be Grateful When Feeling Lucky
When we feel blue or even worse, our primary focus is on what we lack in our lives. We lose sight of the precious and dear things right in front of us and have a sharp focus on what we don't have.
Practicing gratitude enables you to look through a magnifying glass at the things you know you feel lucky and happy to have. It will get you out of focusing on the 'lacking' and 'want' aspects and boost comfort and contentment in your current life.
The wheels of our economy are spun by the feeling that we don't quite have enough. However, aren't you lucky for:
- That one super-shiny pair of life-changing loafers
- The new awesome car
- The new cozy couch
At times, buying into the fantasy of having stuff and needing stuff helps us avoid looking at what is going on in our lives on a deeper level. Being grateful for what we already have, whether material or otherwise, is always a good starting point to feel lucky.
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."
Epicurus
Be Grateful for the Choices You Have
Being free to make choices and having multiple options is what you should be thankful for. It makes your life exciting. We can change our lives, head off in a new direction, and change our state of mind if we wish, a millisecond is all it takes.
All it takes is a fraction of time where you can stop and make a choice, commit to it, and feel at peace with it. If we start to be aware of this privilege, it's a huge game-changer. For example, you can:
- Order food whenever and however you want to. If you are hungry, you can have something of your choice. If you are bored, order something that you are craving. If you have nothing to do, cook something for yourself and others.
- Wear different colors and carry different apparel, may it be trendy, casual, comfy, formal, or work.
- Purchase more than half of the items in a nearby grocery store because you can afford them.
Or you can do hundred of activities all by yourself and enjoy them. Be thankful that you can do them. Be thankful that you have hands, ears, eye and health to do this.
"If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get."
Frank A. Clark
Be Grateful for Little Things
We don't have always to be grateful for momentous occasions only; the little things deserve a shower of gratitude too. This is how we can embed gratitude in our lives every single day.
If we can feel true thanks for the stuff we normally overlook, it can make us much more aware of what's really going on.
For instance, right now, you might probably be sitting in your kitchen on a bar stool and reading this on your laptop. But if you use gratitude to work its magic, you can actually:
- Start to feel the night-time summer breeze wafting through the nearby window.
- Hear the call of crows nearby.
- Feel satisfied with the delicious cup of tea you just drank.
- Smell the soft dreamy scents of the candles in your room next to your bed and feel the peaceful calm under the fairy lights.
Appreciating the little things in your life every day takes the focus away from the negatives that could make an appearance in your script.
We are also blessed with numerous things that we never asked for and that fact goes unnoticed until somebody reminds us.
Such little things include constant access to the internet with several backup options, unlimited clean drinking water, and easy access to medical facilities.
"When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself."
Tecumseh
Be Grateful for the Nature Around You
Observing nature is a good and instant way to throw a few thanks around. Nature is majestic artwork that is constantly changing and surprising us.
There is always something new to see and appreciate in nature, even if you are not quite ready to put that focus on your personal life just yet.
Just walk out of your front door and take a stroll for five minutes. Take a few deep breaths and look at the sky around you while opening your ears to the nearby sounds.
You might hear some birds, see a waft of pink in the evening sky or feel some light rain on your eyelids: all tiny magical wonders to be grateful for.
Start small by making those tiny things count and work your way up to what is going on inside further down the line. There will be a little magic out there somewhere if you look hard enough.
"The world has enough beautiful mountains and meadows, spectacular skies and serene lakes. It has enough lush forests, flowered fields, and sandy beaches. It has plenty of stars and the promise of a new sunrise and sunset every day. What the world needs more of is people to appreciate and enjoy it."
Micheal Josephson
Be Thankful For The Job You Do
You, as an individual, know you are worth more than anybody right now. Hence, only you can appreciate your blessings, even if it's related to your work.
It's time that you value your work life because, in retrospect, your income facilitates all your uncounted needs and wants.
Take a moment to pause and focus on all the good things that happen at your work: your experience so far, your learnings, colleagues who cheer you on every day, and a clean workspace located in a renowned city.
If you are grateful for the job that you currently have, it will automatically do the following:
- Reduce stress at work
- Better work relationships
- Feel happier and cheery
- Experience success on the job
- Optimistic about future
All you have to do is to shift your perspective to positive things. You may even start preparing a list of things to be grateful for at work. Surely, at least ten things will come right away.
Read them again and consider how life at work would be without every item on the list.
You may write thank you notes to anyone relevant to that list. It will not only surprise them; rather, they will also be grateful to you for being supportive of them.
On the way back home, always focus on the positive experience each day brings.
"Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough."
Oprah Winfrey
Conclusion
Now and then, make your gratitude list. Putting pen to a paper will help focus on the "thanks" you want to give even more.
This is one really easy way to get gratitude embedded into your thinking so you can use it as a handy tool whenever needed. Even if nothing particularly eventful happened in a day, look for the magic that was going on around you.
Write down the list of things that made you feel alive or happy for that brief moment. These can be big and wonderful or they can be teeny tiny snippets that felt significant to you.
