Quick Habits To Add More Gratitude To Your Life
Adding gratitude to your life is about both what you think, and what you do.
Our thoughts and actions are a cycle – what you think affects what you do, and how you act affects how you feel. So today we’ll talk about adding both grateful thoughts and grateful actions into your life.
First, a couple of tangible actions you can take to add gratitude into every single day of your life.
1. Set up cues in your life to remind you.
Whenever I speak to people about what they struggle with when it comes to practicing gratitude, without a doubt the thing that comes up the most is people struggle to actually remember to do it.
To add more gratitude into your life — and to make it a regular habit — you need to remember to practice it.
I found that creating cues and reminders in my daily life has been so important in helping me to add more gratitude into my life.
You might like to:
∞ Set a daily reminder or alarm on your phone.
∞ If you use a particular notebook for your gratitude practice put it somewhere you see each day to remind you.
∞ Put a gratitude card or note in your wallet.
∞ Set a gratitude reminder as your phone or computer background.2. Sandwich your day with gratitude
By that I mean: start and end your day with some sort of gratitude practice.
I love starting the day off with gratitude and I feel like it has a positive influence on the rest of my day. And I also find that ending the day with gratitude helps to bring me back to place of appreciation no matter what has happened during the day.
You might like to use getting into and out of bed as reminders to be grateful.
– via One Infinite Life
Grateful Thoughts Make For A Better Life
Here are a few great practices to help you remember all of the things to be grateful for in your life.
Practicing gratitude, no matter what’s facing you, helps to bolster your emotions. It can help make you stronger so when unexpected stress hits, you can handle it better and bounce back better than you ever expected.
Remember The Bad Times
Thinking about a time in your life that really sucked may not seem like the best way to cultivate gratitude in your daily life, but evidently, it’s kind of a crucial part of becoming a more grateful person. According to The Huffington Post, “the key to leading a thankful life is embracing setbacks as part of your overall journey.”
So basically, remembering the difficult times that you’ve already overcome, (like financial hardships, personal losses) can help you gain some much needed perspective when it feels like you have nothing to be grateful for.
Make Time For Your Favorite People
Dr. Robert Emmons told The Huffington Post that gratitude, “actually strengthens relationships and relationships are the strongest predictors of happiness and coping with stress.” Additionally, Dr. Michael E. McCullough, a University of Miami researcher, told The New York Times that, “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship.” So if you want to live a more grateful life, make sure you’re spending quality time with the people you love.
Make Time To Help Others
Not only does research suggest that volunteering can improve feelings of depression, but people who make time to help others usually feel grateful for the experience, because it allows them to use their talents in new, meaningful ways.
As The Huffington Post explains, “people become more grateful as givers rather than receivers.” So whether you choose to volunteer at your local animal shelter on a regular basis, or you commit to babysitting your nieces one night a week so your sister can remember what it’s like to sport clean clothes and eat grownup food, you might want to consider volunteering your services once in awhile.
Savor The Small Stuff
OK, so maybe you’re not where you want to be financially, and that means you can’t afford to do the things you really want to do. Maybe you’re going through a really difficult breakup and everything seems horrible. Or, maybe everything is fine, but you’re in a weird funk right now anyway. Whatever’s going on in your life, though, remember that there will always be good things to enjoy — like pizza, your favorite TV series, soft clothing, and clean sheets. Make an effort to savor the small things in life, then no matter what’s happening in your universe, practicing gratitude should become less challenging.
– via www.bustle.com
Do you practice gratitude in your daily life? What are you most grateful for today?