Gratitude is an essential resource in your happiness, peace, and well-being toolkits. This is not debatable.
Simply put, if you cannot be grateful for, or appreciate, all that you have and all that you are in life, then you cannot adequately enjoy all that you have and all that you are in life. Period.
Our best science now shows us that expressing/feeling gratitude is incredibly rewarding and beneficial to the human brain, and you will know, if you have ever had a “bad day,” after which you simply felt the joy of being grateful for having all of your limbs, something nice to eat, and/or the ability to breathe, that the small act of acknowledging your blessings can be incredibly transformative.
Since gratitude is such a key and foundational component for strengthening and maintaining your well-being, it seems only “right” to ensure that you are incorporating it into your life each day.
Here are 5 Simple ways to get started with this free and easy way to dramatically improve your quality of life and well-being.
Five Simple Ways To Celebrate Your Blessings/Express Gratitude Each Day:
- Start a gratitude journal: Any physical notebook, piece or paper, index card, etc, will do to get you started, but you can obviously purchase a designated book for this activity as well. Simply write down, and journal about, what you are grateful for each day. This can be done at any time throughout a given day as you see fit, but mornings and/or evenings are good times to get started if you would like to set aside a specific time or time of day) to make this practice a regular routine.
- Go for a gratitude walk: This requires you to simple go out for a walk; it can be a walk around your home, yard, neighborhood, on a trail, or even on a treadmill. The goal is to devote at least 15-30 minutes to feeling appreciation while looking out into, and being fully present in, your body and the world. This will help to ground the feeling of gratitude within your physical being more strongly and, therefore, increase the effect of the practice in/on your mind and life.
- Speak/declare your gratitude out loud for five minutes (as often as possible): This can be in the form of a long prayer, song, poem, etc, but requires you to actively speak your gratitude into the world. Like with walking, speaking allows you to tangibly feel how just saying what you are grateful for out loud changes your mindset, emotions, physiology, experience, and outlook on the world and your life.
- Sit for a gratitude meditation: This can be a guided meditation or one in which you simple set the intention to radiate the feeling of gratitude to increase your awareness and recall the sensation of gratitude in your body and mind for overall well-being.
- Create and contribute to a gratitude jar: This can be a physical container that you contribute to and keep present in your awareness as a reminder to practice gratitude often, or a digital folder that you generate on your computer to store all of your points of appreciation.
No matter how you choose to generate and express gratitude in your life, all research and most experiential reports show that the practice will be beneficial to you.
And since it is such an easy way to improve your mood, well-being, and to get yourself in the right frame of mind to get through your day and life, why deprive yourself of this incredibly powerful and free gift?
Be sure to spend at least 5 minutes of each of your days moving forward in a state of gratitude if you are not already doing so.
Even just acknowledging the fact that you are alive and breathing and able to read this post on your own without assistance (no small thing by any assessment) is enough to get you started.
So, with all of this in mind, what are you grateful for today?
Always remember that:
