Gratitude Brings You More To Be Thankful For

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  ~ Melody Beattie

Q: What’s the easiest and most effective way to instantly improve your mood and jump-start your ongoing happiness?

A: To start feeling a deep appreciation and gratitude for your life, as it is, right now.

Really taking the time to think about all the things and people in your life that you’re appreciative of, and filling yourself up with the emotion of gratitude, will quickly replace the sulks, the temper, the boredom or the blues with feelings of warmth and deep happiness; it will get rid of the fear and stress in your life, lift your spirits and position you squarely on cloud nine. If you’re feeling stuck, stressed or not achieving what you really want in your life, gratitude, one of the most powerful emotions available to us, could be the key to turn it all around.

Feeling gratitude for what’s already in your life is a very effective way of training your brain to take in all the good around you rather than focusing on the negative, the problems, or what you believe is lacking in your life. It causes your mind to shift to the positive and allows you to more readily recognize the good things as they occur in your life. You may discover that there are many magnificent things happening to you on a daily basis, which you have, up until now, simply taken for granted.

Despite having so much in their lives, many people feel unfulfilled, stressed and frustrated because they’re not grateful, whereas other people, who outwardly have very little, live rich and satisfying lives because they appreciate every little thing that comes their way. Gratitude inspires happiness.

By regularly practicing feeling grateful you will be teaching yourself a new skill – one that will enable you to become significantly more successful and happy. And like all skills, it needs honing, sometimes inelegantly at first, until it becomes second nature to us and becomes instinctive. And rather than closing the door to all the love and abundance that is available, practicing being thankful will allow you to open yourself up to marvellous opportunities and to start receiving more things in your life to be grateful for.

“…nothing attracts good fortune and success like a joyous, grateful heart” ~ Charles Burke

Feeling grateful and appreciative of the wonderful things in your life is a great thing to do just for the experience of doing it. It’s not something you do to get something in return.

And if you think you have nothing to be grateful for, then fake it till you make it. Say “thank you” often enough, and your mind will start to mimic your words. Pretend, make it up. Ask yourself “If I actually chose, right now, to feel grateful, what could I be grateful for in this very moment?” Even when your circumstances seem negative, you can still move into a state of gratitude just by changing your focus. Start by thinking of all the simple, more tangible things that you feel thankful for. You may be thankful for the food on your table, the roof over your head, your health, your job, your car. Eventually you will go beyond these simple thoughts to include more holistic concepts like feeling grateful for just being, and feeling thankful for life itself. You will move away from practicing being grateful to simply being grateful.

Life is astonishing. Be grateful for every tiny aspect of it!