Why You Should Inculcate Attitude of Gratitude in Your Life

If you have a habit that allows you to regularly reflect and find reasons to be grateful for, you become an individual that has designed a lifestyle that’d enable you to always see the positive side of life even when you’re going through challenges.

Dr. John Briffa in his book A Great Day at The Office, writes that:

“even when we achieve our goals, feelings of satisfaction and contentment can be fleeting.”

It helps to regularly reflect and be grateful for the good things you’ve experienced in life. Doing it regularly will eventually change how you approach life. You’d begin to see yourself feeling more calm and peaceful.

Sometimes you could become downhearted due to the inability to accomplish some of your goals, especially when so much time, energy, and resources have been invested into that particular goal.

But you’re going to find yourself worrying less over what you’re yet to accomplish if you can redirect your mind to momentarily focus on some previous positive experiences that you enjoyed.

In my experience, an attitude of gratitude elicit positive feelings that’d leave me wondering what just happened. It’d be as if some burdens were removed from my life. Frets and anxiety will become minimal. And a feeling of calmness and mental vitality will envelop my mind for that moment.

An attitude of gratitude is beneficial and should be practiced regularly irrespective of what you might be going through in life. It uplifts the mind and induces positive feelings that’d help you to become calm. And regain the mental energy needed to face your tasks daily.

Ergo, finding reasons to be thankful doesn’t mean everything is going very smoothly in your life. Or that you have it all. Rather what it means is that you have control over your life. And that you can make yourself feel great about life.

How I go about it when I’m going through difficult moments is to first acknowledge the challenges I’m facing. Thereafter I’d begin to reflect on some of my accomplishments, delightful events, my family, and the people that have impacted my life positively. Approaching it this way enables me to see the positive side of life regardless of challenges.

The fact that negative experiences and discomforts aren’t going to end in life reinforces the need for you and me to schedule a time in our lives to find reasons to be grateful for.

Gratitude can also be infectious. I experience its infectiousness each time I choose one or two individuals in my life to call, share stories, and reflect on some memorable events we experienced together. This would help us temporarily divert our minds from unhelpful thoughts to past positive experiences.

Reflecting on past pleasant experiences with the person I had it with allows both of us to feel grateful during and after the conversation by remembering some nice moments we shared. And it’d also help me to relieve stress and to foster my connections with friends and relatives.

It’s also beneficial to find the time to show gratitude to friends, family, and colleagues especially during this period that the pandemic has disorganized our normal ways of living our lives. You could be the reason why someone is going to start feeling hopeful and enthusiastic about life again.

According to Francesca Gino, “feeling grateful has several beneficial effects on us: gratitude enables us to savor positive experiences, cope with stressful circumstances and be resilient in the face of challenges, and strengthen our social relationships.”

Gratitude reminds me of the good things going on in my life. Things that I might fail to notice if I don’t intentionally direct my focus to where I’d find them. And I’ll feel positively different after I’ve identified and momentarily focused on these positive moments. As a result, I’ll find myself going about life with zest and hope.

And I’ve found that living this way is immensely beneficial especially nowadays that most people are almost always focused on accomplishing one thing or another. Taking time to focus on past memorable moments helps me to remain positive and hopeful with my goals and targets in life.

Gratitude dismantles the barrier you set in your mind through persistent negative thoughts. And connects you to a part of you that induces positive feelings about yourself and life. And this would help you to understand that you have enough to feel good and be happy.

***

Conclusion

The wonderment of gratitude is best explained after experiencing it regularly through daily practice.

It has helped me immensely in realigning my mind to focus more on things that help me feel better. It has also helped me to connect more to that part of me that isn’t all about actualizing goals but about being.

Take time to regularly focus on things you’re grateful for — for a moment. It could be your home, your job, or your spouse. It could be anything. Try to recognize how it makes you feel. The likelihood is that you’re going to feel vitalized and less anxious. That’s what an attitude of gratitude does.

And to see positive results from an attitude of gratitude, you first have to acknowledge that you’ve received good things in life. Accept that you have positive things going on around you. Things to be grateful for.

In my experience, the more I do it, the more it changes how I go about my life daily. I might be having a bad day and still feel enthusiastic and upbeat about life.

This story was previously published on Medium by the same author.