New Ways to Practice Gratitude

Expressing gratitude for the amazing things in your life is one of the best ways to boost your mood, become happier, and feel content in your life. While many people choose to write down their gratitude in their journal, there are many other ways to practice gratitude and still get the same benefits. If you have been looking for some new options to be more grateful for the blessings in your life, here are some great places to start.

Start a Mindful Practice

Mindfulness and gratitude are very closely linked and can work together without trying too hard. If you want to be more grateful, it helps to also have a daily mindful practice. Every time you experience something in your day, and can channel that moment with mindfulness, just think of how you think or feel in that moment. Don’t let your mind wander to what you will do next or what you need to do next week.

Just sit in that present moment, acknowledge how you feel, and be grateful for the moment you are experiencing. The more you do this, the more it just becomes a habit you don’t even have to think about.

Tell People You Are Grateful

You don’t have to keep your gratitude all to yourself! The more you tell other people how much you appreciate them, the more you will feel that gratitude yourself. You don’t have to keep your gratitude all to yourself! If someone does you a favor, holds a door open, lends an ear, or offers their friendship, say thank you. Tell people how much you appreciate them, and in what ways they have improved your life.

Be More Inquisitive About WHY You Are Grateful

If you are having trouble keeping up with your gratitude practice, ask yourself questions about how you feel about something. Be more inquisitive overall to understand what makes you feel joy and what things you are most grateful for. Get curious with your own mind and thoughts, understand what triggers you to be happy.

Do you enjoy being around others or are you more of an introvert who is most grateful for times at home alone? Are you someone who can enjoy a good book or do you prefer watching movies? How does a gentle fitness routine and nutritious food feel to you? What do you tend to feel most grateful for on a daily basis?

How a Grateful Attitude Makes You Happy

Research shows that practicing gratitude boosts energy, inspires optimism, and encourages getting out of your comfort zone, and creates more social interactions that combine to create a happier and more satisfying life.

Inspires Positivity

When you stop and reflect on the things that you are grateful for, you stop anger, negativity, and stress in its tracks. When you focus on things that make you happy, you naturally relax your brain and release chemicals that make you feel better. A better mood allows you to perform at your best and make more responsible choices.

Improves Relationships

As you stop and reflect, you highlight moments in your life you never want to take for granted. In turn, increasing your relationships, and you take the time to only focus on them and nothing else.

Leads to A Healthier Life

Reducing and preventing stress leads to a longer and healthier life. Daily high levels of cortisol can lead to many mental and physical health problems that can hinder your ability to do the things that make you happy. Being grateful can act as an instant stress reliever as you highlight the things that bring you value and happiness.

Increases Your Self-Worth

When you think about the things you are most grateful for, It gives you a chance to experience the bigger picture and gain a new perspective about yourself and your abilities. It allows you to highlight your accomplishments to feel a sense of pride, growing your self-esteem and confidence, allowing you to continue growing your skills and try new things to grow.

Improves Ability to Handle Challenges

A grateful attitude gives you the skills and knowledge necessary to deal with or cope with irritation or difficult situations. It allows you to work better with others and be more patient as you understand and focus on the bigger picture. For example, focusing on how grateful you are to have a job you love can make it easier to deal with annoying coworkers.

To practice gratitude, start each morning by reflecting on one simple thing you are thankful for. Simply ask yourself, “What brings me the most happiness?” and reflect on all the reasons why.

Always say “thank you” when others help you, no matter how small. It’s incredible how good it makes you feel, but it also helps them too. When you return the favor and spread kindness, it always ensures that those around you feel valued, increasing your gratitude, releasing those good hormones, and ultimately making you feel happier.

7 Ways to Become More Grateful

When you are grateful for something, you will show appreciation for it by saying thank you, but the feeling of gratefulness goes much deeper than just showing thanks. It’s more like a feeling than an action. It starts inside your brain and manifests itself by your actions. To increase your feelings of gratitude, follow these 7 ways to become more grateful.

• Keep a Gratitude Journal – One of the ways to become more grateful involves practicing intentional gratefulness by writing down the things you are grateful for each day. You don’t have to be super detailed, just write bullets about your day and the things that brought you that feeling.

• Remember What You’ve Overcome – One way to elicit grateful thoughts is to think about when you overcome something in your life. When you see how far you’ve come, you cannot help but feel good about it.

• Count Your Blessings – Each day take some time to actively count your blessings. You can do this via prayer and thank your creator for those blessings, or if you prefer you can think about them as you fall into sleep, or meditate.

• Keep Track of Those Things That Make You Feel Grateful – When you are living your life if you get a sudden feeling of gratitude, instead of letting it pass, note it. Write it down so that you can think about it more often.

• Tell People Thank You – When people help you, are good to you, polite and do things for you always tell them thank you. Even if it’s their job to do it, be the type of person that is a bright light in their day too by verbally telling them thanks.

• Use Positive Language – When you are talking about things focus on the type of words you use. Try to turn any words with a negative connotation into positive words instead.

• Fake It till You Make It – While you don’t want to stuff your feelings long term, going through the motions by saying thanks, keeping the journal, meditating and/or praying will go a long way to triggering the right feelings of gratitude that you can conjure up whenever you need them.

As you focus on gratitude, something interesting will happen to you. You’ll start to notice the smallest things, like the gentle fragrant breeze after it rains, the smile on your child as he sleeps, and the nice things your spouse does without even thinking about it like giving you a foot rub for two minutes after work while discussing your day. It all adds up to a good life that you want to feel good about.

5 Ways to Practice Gratitude During the Holidays

For many, the holidays are a great time to be around friends and family while also being thankful for the things, people, and experiences they’ve enjoyed throughout the year. It is a time where chaos from life slows down just enough to enjoy time with friends and family. Due to this, many people like to use this time to practice gratitude to strengthen their relationships, form new bonds, and increase their happiness.

Make a List

An effective way to remind yourself to be thankful for everything you have is to make a list each day. Create a with a primary list of gratitude that can be viewed daily and create new ones for the things you are newly thankful for that day. The more you are aware of the things you do have, the less time you will be spending worrying about stuff you don’t have. Over time, happiness and gratitude will come more naturally.

Make It Routine

Clear out time in your daily schedule to practice gratitude. Use this time to create your list or talk to yourself about what things made you happy and thankful. Don’t allow your busy schedule to be an excuse when you can easily practice gratitude within five to ten minutes. You can do it on your drive to and from work, on your daily run, or while cooking dinner.

Reflect

Take the time not only to list out who and what you are thankful for but also to reflect. Reflect on the people, things, and experiences you have had to make you feel grateful. This a great way to feel gratitude, but it also gives you time to experience these happy moments all over again.

Do Acts of Kindness

Gratitude can also be manifested by giving back to others who need it. There are always ways to give back every day that do not necessarily require money. Smile and wave at everyone you see, open the door for someone, or give them a caring ear. The holidays are a perfect time for you to volunteer your time at a soup kitchen or help gather food and toys for those who are less fortunate.

Write Thank You Cards

Don’t forget the thank you cards this year. Even if someone did not provide a specific gift and just came by for dinner, send a note through the real mail. Let them know you were happy to see them and enjoyed their company or the present they offered. A personalized thank you card will make everyone feel appreciated and valued while strengthening your gratitude.

Make practicing gratitude part of your routine this holiday season to increase your gratitude. Be generous with your time, love, and be a listening ear or volunteer your time. Gratitude is essential for healthy relationships and to help you lead a happy, fulfilling life.

How to Be Inspired When Nothing is Going Right

Everyone has times in life where it feels as if nothing is going right. Many people have times in life where truly nothing is going right, and it’s not even about feelings. It’s just true. It can be tough to find inspiration when bad things happen, especially if they’re truly out of your control. However, there are things you can do to be inspired when nothing is going right.

•Focus on Gratitude – It might seem impossible to you right now, but some people have it much worse than you do, and they find a way to see the bright side. This can be hard to accept, but anytime you feel put upon finding people who are worse off than you are so that you can focus on being grateful that it’s not worse.

•Allow Yourself to Feel – Even though you probably do have it better than others, it’s okay to feel your feelings. It’s perfectly fine to be angry, sad, or have any emotion you want to have regarding the situation. However, feeling an emotion doesn’t mean you have to act on it if it gives you negative results.

•Learn to Breathe – When going through bad times, it might surprise you to know that you are likely holding your breath a lot. Take time each day to simply breathe. The oxygen you take in will enable your mind to work better, and you’re going to feel better.

•Stop Asking Why – During hard times, the biggest question is often why. But that sometimes has no good answer. It just is. So, stop asking why and instead ask what. What can you do if anything to make either the situation different or the situation more livable? Then do that.

•Remember That Everything is Temporary – Nothing is forever, including you. That can sometimes seem super depression, but when you realize that the things you’re going through now will end eventually even if you don’t do anything, it can make it easier to get through it.

•Focus on Neutral Language – If you cannot bring yourself to practice positive self-talk right now, that’s okay. Instead, focus on making your thoughts and words neutral. Neutral can make you more positive because you’re not focused on the negative and is often easier to do when you’re in the thick of the problem.

•Disconnect for a While – For some issues, disconnecting from social media and the outside world for a bit can help. However, don’t isolate yourself away from people who are good for you.

•Focus on Mindfulness – Being super aware of what you are doing right now instead of what comes before or after is an excellent way to help yourself through a difficult time. Anytime you feel yourself getting anxious about what’s happening and losing your inspiration, double down on really experiencing and feeling what you are doing right now.

•Do Things You Love – If possible, even when everything else sucks, find ways to do things you love. If you’re stuck in the bed sick, watch movies, read, or just use your imagination to dream up unusual things.

•Hire Help – If you feel stuck in your lack of inspiration and it’s affecting your life, it will help you to find someone that can guide you. A professional life coach or business coach can really address these issues and even inspire you by guiding you.

It can be challenging to see the end of the road when life is weighing you down. However, nothing lasts forever. This really will pass. Even if you think it’s never going to pass because it feels like that at the moment, it really will. When you hold on to that and just take your time making it through the hard times, you can find inspiration in the smallest things if you just try.

What If I Have Nothing To Be Grateful For?

We’ve said a lot in this book so far about how practicing gratitude frequently helps you to bring more positivity into your life. But what can you do if you feel that you have absolutely nothing to be grateful for?

Sometimes, everything in life can feel like it’s just too overwhelming. If everything sucks and you’re struggling to find even one thing to be thankful for, how do you move forward?

Although gratitude should be a simple thing to feel, it’s surprisingly difficult sometimes. That’s because we’re hardwired to overlook the good things we experience and, instead, put our focus primarily on everything that goes wrong. It even has a name – negativity bias. When we take it at its most basic level, this means we tend to pay more attention to the things that are bad because they threaten us.

We can safely ignore the good things since they won’t cause us any harm. However, bad things may be dangerous and therefore, we fixate automatically on them. This may be a primitive human response, but we don’t need to be controlled by it. Once you know that negativity bias exists and how it works, you can work on overriding your biological programming. You can choose to concentrate on the good things over the bad because, after all, there’s always something positive to think about, even when it seems otherwise.

Even in the most desperate and darkest times in your life, rest assured that there will still be something, however small, to feel grateful for. It’s especially important to focus on the good things when you feel like there’s nothing left in life to be thankful for. That’s the time when gratitude will make a huge difference. So, make a point of looking for something you’re thankful for every day and, eventually, you’ll begin to see more and more positive things around you and focus less and less on the negative.

How do you begin to find things to be thankful for if your life feels like it’s going down the tubes? Here are a few starting points to get you going....