Why Being Grateful is the Best Gift You Can Give Yourself and Others.
We all have things we should be grateful for, but all too often we forget to be grateful for the simple things in our lives. Everything we have done, everything we have achieved and everything we have in our lives deserves our gratitude. Even the not so nice things, deserve our gratitude for they came into our lives to teach us something, to get us out of our comfort zone for us to learn and to grow.
Some people seem to get everything they want in life, for some of us, life is more of a struggle. But all of us have things to be grateful for. Whether it be the job we have, the roof over our heads, the food on our table or the people around us.
“Acknowledging the good you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” - Eckhart Tolle
It’s all too easy to forget to be thankful for the everyday things. The big things that are a constant in our lives and the little things that happen on daily basis. When something or someone is always there, they become so much a part of our lives that we just assume that they will always be there, and we stop thinking about how fortunate we are to have them.
“Contentment is not the fulfilment of what you want, but the realisation of how much you already have.” – Unknown
Most of us were taught from a young age to say thank you when someone gives us a gift or does something nice for us. Saying the words and being truly thankful or grateful is another thing.
The true meaning of gratitude is not the words but the feeling you get. It’s much deeper and can and will have an immediate positive effect on your mood and your outlook. When you feel gratitude you start to see things in a different light, you start to see the human kindness of those around you, and you can’t help but emulate that by showing kindness and being friendly to everyone you meet.
Things start to look better, you notice the little things, you stop seeing problems wherever you go, and if you do see any, you find solutions.
Being grateful and telling the other person how grateful you are not only elevating your own spirits, but also lifting the spirts of the recipient, this is a win-win. For the small gesture of sharing your gratefulness, you have just given the other person something to make them feel good, they, in turn may well go off and share their gratitude with another, starting a wave of positivity and gratitude.
“Sometimes we should express our gratitude for the small and simple things like the scent of the rain, the taste of our favorite food, or the sounds of a loved one's voice.” - Joseph B. Wirthlin
Taking a few moments every day to remind yourself of all the things in your life that you are grateful for, is such an under used, yet easy and quick way to start or finish your day with positive and happy thoughts. You don’t have to stop all other activities to do it, you can do it whist you are in the shower or travelling to and from work, saying them out loud has more impact, but even if you list them in your head you will still feel the benefits of your gratitude. You could even write them down in a gratitude journal or create a gratitude jar by printing off the image below and placing it in a glass jar, writing each thing you are grateful for on a square of paper and folding it before placing it in the jar. When you need a pick-me-up or a reminder of just how fortunate you are you can take them out one-by-one and read them.
When I first started to use my gratitude jar I didn’t know what to put in there. So I started with challenging myself to find one thing I was grateful for in each day.
I recently came across my old gratitude jar (I still use one now but I have upgraded the jar J). It must have started to get easier very quickly because the jar was stuffed full.
I sat on my bed and emptied it out, I smiled so hard at what I was reading, there were several “hearing my children’s laughter” 3 x “seeing Emu’s wandering on the side of the road on the way to work”, plenty of “my dogs welcome when I come home from work”, dinners I’d really enjoyed, friends I’d met up with, things I’d achieved, opportunities that had presented themselves and I had taken, the list go on and on…
I still make a point of writing down the things that I am grateful for, I chant a list in the shower to set my day off well and write down things that happened in my day that im grateful for in the evening before going to bed. When I go to bed thinking of how grateful I am, I always get a better night’s sleep.