Choosing Gratitude

Well, it may appear like how you feel – how happy you are, how stressed you are, even how well you sleep – is out of your control, but it is a choice you make. You can choose to be happy by being appreciative for what you have.  Choosing gratitude is the way.

You may either focus on what you lack, who has mistreated you, and what isn’t going your way, or you can choose to focus on what isn’t going your way.

What’s more, guess what? You’ll be in a bad mood. You could blame your sadness on others, circumstances, or fate. But, at the end of the day, it all comes down to you and your decisions. You have the option of choosing happiness or suffering.

Making The Best Decisions

How can you ensure that you make the best decisions possible throughout your life? Focusing on appreciation is one of the simplest methods to ensure you live a happy and fulfilling life. Of course, saying it is easier than doing it. It’s natural to be disappointed when a friend cancels your lunch date, and that’s fine. What will make the difference is how you choose to proceed from here.

You can opt to focus on the slight you believe your friend committed against you. The more you consider it, the more enraged you become. You get back into your car, drive home, and let it ruin your day instead of eating lunch at the new restaurant you were looking forwards to tasting.

That is a decision. Let’s have a look at another one.

The situation is the same. Your friend slams the door in your face. You’re dissatisfied, perhaps even enraged. You take a deep breath, let go of your negative emotions, and make a gratitude-based decision. What is it that you can be grateful for in this situation?

Perhaps you’ve been hoping for some quiet alone time to hear your own thoughts.

Choosing Gratitude – Be Grateful

Maybe there’s a business you’ve been meaning to visit or a movie you’ve been meaning to see for a while, and now is the moment. Perhaps you’ve been wanting to pay a visit to an old acquaintance. Maybe you’ll just have a nice supper by yourself and pick up some takeout for your partner on your way out the door.

Instead of returning home upset, you’ll be grateful for the few hours you set apart for yourself. And who knows what else. Perhaps you speak with your friend later that evening and discover that she was unable to attend your lunch date due to a family issue.

How guilty would you feel then for allowing yourself to be angry with her?

And how bad would she feel about ruining your day? Instead, you produced happiness for yourself by focusing on thankfulness and making the best of the situation. That, in my opinion, is some sort of superpower.

What You Concentrate On Manifests

I’m going to share a small secret with you that I picked up years ago that has shown to be really useful. What you concentrate on manifests. Practicing thankfulness trains your mind to be more positive, which has some intriguing physical consequences.

Gratitude and positive thinking have a direct impact on your brain chemistry.

You control the release of particular hormones and neurotransmitters that influence how you feel both physically and psychologically by focusing on appreciation and happiness. Let’s take a look at how it works in practise.

Choosing Gratitude – Feel Good Hormones 

Dopamine and serotonin are two “feel good” hormones that are released when you focus on happiness and thankfulness. These two neurotransmitters are in charge of making you feel warm and cuddly. Yes, there are other methods to obtain them, such as through exercise and chocolate.

But who wouldn’t want to boost the effectiveness of these potent antidepressants by doing something as easy as expressing and receiving gratitude?  This emphasises the fact that you have the ability to create your own happiness.

Practice gratitude for more feel good hormones.

It’s not only a cerebral activity, either. The hormone and neurotransmitter balances in your body and brain shift when you focus on positivity and make a conscious effort to be more thankful and joyful.

In short, cultivating gratitude and the resultant sense of well-being is a potent method for combating sadness and anxiety that often outperforms pharmaceutical medications while avoiding the negative side effects.

Choosing Gratitude – Less Stress Hormones 

Stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, and others are released when you are nervous or terrified. That isn’t always a terrible thing. When you’re about to get hit by a car, it helps you react quickly, and it makes you run quicker when you need to get away from someone.

When it’s a reaction to something that isn’t a physical risk, though, it works against you and robs you of your health and wellbeing. Tax day, for example, or being concerned about what your co-worker thinks of you.

How Stress Hormones Effect You

Stress hormones can cause weight gain, sadness, anxiety, and cardiovascular problems. You know you should do everything you can to minimise your stress levels, and it turns out that practising thankfulness and positive thinking is one of the most effective techniques.

So choose happiness and know that you’re improving your emotional and physical well-being.

What’s the bottom line, then? When you are aware of all the things in your life for which you are grateful, you may learn to appreciate all the good, even in the face of adversity, and nurture happiness. Stop waiting for the right person or the ideal situation to come along.

Choose Happiness- Choose Gratitude

Don’t sit around waiting for happiness to come to you. Right now, be content. Now is the time. And make appreciation a part of your journey.  Practice gratitude for less stress hormones.

In our daily lives, we take a lot of excellent things for granted. We have a house over our heads, a consistent salary, a wonderful partner, and the ability to go for a weekend run. The specifics differ, but one of the major benefits of modern life is the abundance of amazing things we can rely on.

We aren’t used to falling short, so when something unexpected happens and our lives begin to unravel, it’s easy to fall into thought patterns that focus on scarcity and misery.

Sometimes bad things happen as a result of our decisions. They are sometimes beyond our control. In either scenario, we must decide how we will respond to each crisis. One piece of advise to remember no matter what difficulties you are facing is to remember how fortunate you are.

Choosing Gratitude Has The Power To Transform

Gratitude has the power to transform what we have into enough.

I have a favourite quote that I’d like to share with you by Melody Beattie. This is it:

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” 

Consider how you may begin to practise this in your daily life. When things go wrong and everything starts to feel overwhelming, a good place to start is to simply take a deep breath and pause for a bit. Then think about one small item you’re thankful for throughout this period.

It could be as basic as being able to breathe clean, fresh air or live to fight another day.

Locate that something and begin to expand on it. What else do you have to be thankful for? Continue to make that mental list until the urgency fades and you can think straight again. When you do, no matter how horrible things appear at first, you can begin to discover your way out.

Keep in mind that you never know what good can emerge out of the struggle you’re going through right now.

Make Lemonade When Life Brings You Lemons

Make lemonade when life brings you lemons, and remember to count your blessings and use thankfulness to turn what you have into enough. This is something our forefathers excelled at. It’s  time we rekindled that habit.

It’s easier said than done to cultivate thankfulness and positivity. Especially if you suffer from anxiety or sadness. Get help if you need it, if you ever find yourself sliding into a deep hole of depression. There’s nothing wrong with seeing a therapist or talking to a counsellor. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Break Free From Negativity – Practice Gratitude

When circumstances aren’t nearly so awful, there’s a lot you can do to break free from the negative cycle. Begin by acknowledging and verbalising your feelings. What are your actual feelings? Is it annoyance or anger? Frustration or dissatisfaction? Make an effort to be specific.

Look into it. Yes, it can be difficult, and some people would rather not think about their emotions, but figuring out where you are emotionally is the first step to getting unstuck.

After you’ve identified the emotion, you can work on determining what produced it. Sometimes the solution is self-evident. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In either scenario, I recommend digging further because the obvious solution isn’t often the true root reason.

Yes, you may be enraged with your spouse for running up the credit card debt, but if you delve deeper, you may discover that your core values are incompatible.

Once you’ve figured out what’s causing your bad sentiments, you may concentrate on resolving them. Exactly what that entails will differ from case to instance. The key point is that it provides you with something specific and significant to do.

You no longer feel powerless or out of control. It’s something you can work with, and it’ll help you think more optimistically just by itself.

It also allows you to put some distance between yourself and the negative feelings. You may still be angry with your spouse, but it offers you the opportunity to reflect on all the things you admire about him or her.

It allows you to behave outside of the negativity and maintain a positive relationship while working things out.

And it can offer you the mental space you need to comprehend that you have the choice of continuing to dwell in negativity or choosing the path of forgiveness. You can’t alter everything or everyone at the same time.

Choosing Gratitude – Let Go Of Negative Feelings

Sometimes the best way to become more positive is to acknowledge and then let go of negative emotions.

All of this is, of course, easier said than done. A journal can be a valuable tool throughout your journey. When you’re feeling stuck and can’t see a way forwards, talk to a trusted friend or confidant. A fresh set of eyes can shed a lot of light on a situation. Meditation can also be beneficial.

Finally, surround yourself with positive people. Get outside and take in the scenery. Spend time assisting others. And don’t forget to remind yourself of all the things you have to be thankful for on a frequent basis.

Choosing Gratitude

Regularly Practice Thankfulness

Regularly practising thankfulness has a positive impact on your life, health, and mental and emotional well-being. It doesn’t end there, though. When you start to direct your thankfulness outwards and spread it widely, it will have a huge impact on individuals around you and the world at large.

Gratitude is the parent of all virtues, according to Cicero, a Roman writer and philosopher. To put it another way, when we practise appreciation, we improve our abilities in areas such as kindness, generosity, orderliness, courage, honesty and respect, to name a few.

What does this imply in terms of application? We can’t help but improve as people if we practise thankfulness.

Let’s take it a step farther now. What if, instead of focusing on yourself, you extended your thankfulness to the rest of the world? What might go wrong? What kind of a force for good might you conjure up? You never know how many lives you might change for the better.

Let’s look at how you, I, and everyone else reading this can begin to express our thankfulness by sharing it with others around us.

Choosing Gratitude – Random Acts of Kindness 

Do something nice for someone you don’t know. This can be as simple as offering a stranger on the street an open and honest smile or a few pleasant words and a complement to the clerk ringing up your items.

It could also be something as simple as delivering a meal to an elderly neighbour or purchasing a drink for the person in line behind you at the coffee shop drive-thru.

Respect And Thank Those Who Serve You 

From first responders to the waiter at your favourite restaurant, there are many people in our communities who serve us. Make it a point to be respectful and thank them with words, deeds, and a good tip in the case of that waitress.

Show them your appreciation for all they do to make your life easier. Practice gratitude by respecting and thanking those who serve you.

Volunteer In Your Community 

What better way to express your thanks than to volunteer your time and talents? There are several chances for volunteers to participate in various initiatives and for a range of causes. Look into what’s available in your area and make an attempt to volunteer once a month.

You’ll be surprised at how much you get out of it, not simply because it’s a wonderful way to give back and share gratitude.  Practice gratitude by volunteering in your community.

Deepen Your Relationships

Last but not least, I’d like to encourage you to work on building stronger bonds with others. When you take the time to listen and actively focus on getting closer to the people you care about, you will feel more grateful and lead by example.

The ball is now in your court now that you have some ideas. What will you do to spread thankfulness in your own circle of influence today, this week, or this month? Go out and make a difference. Make the world a more thankful and better place.  Practice gratitude by deepening your relationships with others.

Choosing Gratitude

Practice Gratitude As It Can Help You Live Abundantly

Would you desire to live a life that is abundantly happy and content? What about a life that is both physically and mentally healthy? Showing and communicating thankfulness will greatly boost your odds of this happening.

That’s correct, even something as basic as practising gratitude and expressing gratitude for the people and things in your life may have a significant influence.

Here are some simple actions you can do to express your thankfulness starting today. I hope this shows you how to practice gratitude.

1. Tell the individuals you care about how much you appreciate them. We frequently take for granted those closest to us. To make it significant, make it a point to do it on a frequent basis and with specificity.
2. Consider the people who push you to grow. Thank them for assisting you in growing and becoming stronger.
3. Take a few minutes each week to write a letter or send an email to someone who has influenced you in some way. This might be a teacher, a mentor, an old buddy, or anyone else.
4. Give the gift of your time to someone to express your gratitude for their presence in your life. This is especially vital if you have any elderly relatives. Your time with them is limited. Make the best of the situation.
5. Begin using a gratitude journal and set aside time each day to write down three things for which you are grateful. It will brighten even the darkest days and help you to see things in a new light.
6. Allow yourself to forgive yourself if you don’t achieve all of your objectives or if things don’t go your way. Appreciate what you have and what you are learning from each event.
7. Compliment those that are close to you. Encourage them to be proud of themselves. It’s a subtle but effective method to express gratitude. The same can be said about little, meaningful gifts and acts of service.
8. It’s time to pay it forward. Do something pleasant for a coworker or a complete stranger. Random acts of kindness are an excellent method to promote gratitude and positivity in the world.
9. Give a hug and a nice word to someone who is going through a difficult time. Show them that you care about them and are grateful to have them in your life by showing them physical attention. 
10. Take care of yourself and invest in regular self-care to show your body and mind thanks for everything they provide for you every day.

I’ll end with a quotation. Take a few moments to read it, re-read it, and absorb it completely.

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” 

William Arthur Ward

I hope this post helps to show you how to practice gratitude every day in many ways.

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