According to research, people who are more thankful in their lives are less likely to suffer from psychological issues and are happier. It also increases their mental resilience and gives them the ability to feel better about themselves and the world around them.
That means that if we focus on what is good in our life and keep what is not-so-good away from our attention, our well-being goes through the roof. This includes taking pleasure of the simple things in life and celebrating everything good that happens to us.
Unfortunately, while most of us are aware of the benefits of gratitude, not a lot put any effort to practice it consciously. We are more likely to feel happy if something good happens to us on a day than we are to find something good in a day about which we can feel happy about.
That’s why in this article I’ve come up with these tips to consciously train ourselves of gratitude:
#1: Actively focus on feeling appreciative
Instead of pinpointing what can be improved in your life, try to fixate your attention on what good is happening to you on a daily basis. You don’t have to have a super car or multi-million dollars in your bank account to be appreciative. Little things should make you feel grateful.
For instance, if all your loved ones have remained safe in the current times, you have a huge reason to be feeling appreciative. You might also want to be thankful if your loved ones were around you during the quarantine – as that must have made it easy for you to withstand the time indoors.
#2: Write positively about your own life
You might want to keep a gratitude journal and include it in (on a daily basis) all the good things that happen to you. Remember, only the biggest victories aren’t the ‘good’ things. You can write things as small as getting your desired Clorox 360 cleaner as a positive fact about the day.
Provided you do that, you’d see that your mindset towards your life would change. You’d be able to get out of that ‘meh’ attitude and would be able to focus on what’s pleasing in you and around you.
#3: Express gratitude to others
If you express your gratitude to others, nine out of ten times they will return the favor. After all, all of us want to be happy, and we become happy when the other person is thanking us for the good things that we have done for ourselves.
Again, it mustn’t take a huge gift from the other person for you to express your gratitude to them. Things as small as them letting you rent their Graco electrostatic spray gun for a day should be enough for them to earn your appreciativeness.