“What’s gonna set you free?
Look inside and you’ll see
When you’ve got so much to say
It’s called gratitude…”
The life of 21st century is nothing if not fast and running at your cosmic pace as a means to some end, you often fail to notice the bounty and abundance that you are already surrounded with! This is where gratitude comes into the picture. Gratitude is all about being thankful for all the great things in your life so that you can celebrate yourself and your harmonious existence.
When was the last time you just sat and appreciated a beautiful sunset or thanked your mother for cooking you a nutritious dinner? Every single day of your life, no matter how uneventful, is full of uncountable reasons to be happy and feel thankful but because many of these fortunate “reasons” put themselves to action everyday without you needing to put any effort; you tend to take them for granted and fail to notice how much happiness they can bring to you if only you stop to say “Thank you”!
Once in a prayer, a man asked God to give him everything that was needed to enjoy life! As an answer to the man’s prayer, God simply said – “I have given you life so that you can enjoy everything!”
You wake up every day in the morning with your head buzzing with regrets of our past and worries about your future. You are so occupied with what has happened and what can happen that you fail to live your present to the fullest and ignore the many things that make your present so beautiful! By embracing gratitude as a way of life, you can learn to be thankful for your good health, family and friends, talents, present accomplishments, the beautiful nature that surrounds you, music, movies or just about anything that manages to spread a smile on your face and makes your life worth living even in the tiniest possible way. By being thankful, you shift your focus from all the imperfections in your life to the parts where everything is right and thus what you have in front of you is a life filled with beauty and plenty of reasons to rejoice! Do not think that being grateful is synonymous with living in denial of everything that is wrong around you! It simply means that you choose to be happy about the good things instead of sweating about the bad things in and around your life!
How does gratitude work?
There is a perennial stream of energy that flows through the universe that is very powerful. When you focus on the good things and the good experiences of life you become a vessel wanting to be filled! When you say “thank you” you acknowledge the bounty and abundance that envelops you and thus you unconsciously appeal to the forces of nature to give you more of it. In return these forces work for you to shower you with all the goodness that you are entitled to simply because you value it and have made room for the same in your life by being grateful! When you fail to notice the goodness in your life you unconsciously push them and they get foreshadowed by all the bad things and imperfections. This spins a web of negative energy around you that not only has the power of upsetting you and your mental peace but might also have its bad effects on your health! To avoid all this, all you have to do is to embrace gratitude so that a bliss filled life can be yours!
Gratitude enhances the standards of life – a scientifically proven fact:
Researchers at the University of California and the University of Miami conducted a practical experiment where it was discovered that the group of people who were instructed to pay attention to the good things and happy moments in their lives were happier by twenty five percent than the ones who were asked to notice things that cause annoyance, frustration and anger. The former group had better health, slept better, was mostly calm and on the whole was happier than the latter group, the members of which showed signs of aggressiveness! Researches reveal that when you show appreciation, the levels of serotonin that is the hormone of happiness rises and it increases your immunity as well!
Advantages of embracing gratitude as a way of life:
By adopting the attitude of gratitude you can benefit in more ways than one! When you focus on the blessings that make your life better, you dilute all the negative energy that surrounds you. It helps you look at your life and problems from a perspective that is wholesome. This not only helps you reduce your stress levels but it keeps anger, frustration and most importantly disappointment and dissatisfaction at bay! Since all these negative factors are tossed out of your life, you attain the state of mind which helps you lead a happy life and helps you advance towards your goals with renewed vigor and better progress rates!
How to be grateful:
Being thankful is very easy! To show gratitude you do not need monumental things to happen to you. You can just thank the nature and the people around you for the smallest of things such as the refreshing spell of shower when the mercury was soaring or the kind gesture of somebody offering to share his or her lunch box with you. A great way to incorporate the attitude of gratitude in your life is by maintaining a note book where you can note down all the moments of happiness that take place in the course of your day. All the good things you saw, heard, smelled, did – everything can find a fitting place in that list! At the end of the day when you make that list and recollect all the goodness that your day was blessed with, you will feel a wave of satisfaction run through you. The world will become a better place and you, a much happier person!