Gratitude
There's a reason you keep hearing this: gratitude can and will change your life, but it goes far beyond saying "thank you" when someone holds the door.
Gratitude is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as the feeling and quality of being grateful/thankful. Quality indicates that gratitude can be something permanent within you, not just a passing feeling.
We do this by raising our awareness and by setting the specific goal of looking at what is working in our lives and of noticing even the small things that we sometimes take for granted.
The point is not to wait for something big or major to happen in our lives so we can enjoy it and then move on. It is easy to feel gratitude when we get a promotion at our job, but it is more important to look at the small things and feel grateful because we had a meaningful conversation with a friend, or we did a small act of kindness that day.
Why be grateful?
Practicing gratitude helps reinforce and boost our immune system, it improves sleep quality and energy level and fights against fatigue. Expressing gratitude is linked to lower levels of stress, depression and anxiety. It facilitates positive emotions and makes us more resilient.
It improves our emotional and physical health
It improves our relationships
It helps us put things into perspective
Boost happiness and peace of mind
Increase resiliency and empathy
Enable individuals to achieve financial goals
Allow for better sleep
Open the door to more relationships
Enhance mental strength and self-esteem
How can we be grateful?
Going for a walk
Schedule a short walk into your day, during which you actively notice everything around you that pleases you: the warmth of the sun, a cool breeze, the sound of the birds, a playful dog, unique architecture
Journal
This is the practice of writing down a few things you're thankful for every day. It creates a record of special moments you can read when you're having a rough day, and it teaches you to identify the good parts of your life, no matter what else is going on.
Gratitude Jar/folder
It can seem overwhelming when having hard days but having a jar/folder on what you are grateful for creates a feeling of happiness and knowing you are enough.
Volunteering
This provides a bigger perspective of life. Simply helping others, help you which boosts well-being.
Practicing gratitude and appreciating others doesn’t mean to see the whole world only positive and neglect any negative experiences and emotions. And it is also not silver lining them. But it supports us to balance the negativity bias we have in our brain that results from evolution. We tend to see what is not working and has not been perfect or might be a differentiator between us and others somehow (comparison). So why not strengthen the positive via gratitude practices and appreciation to balance this given imbalance?