Gratitude: All You Ever Need

I don’t want to overstate this… but gratitude is basically the greatest thing ever. In my opinion, it is the single biggest key to happiness and success.

The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude.

-Wallace Wattles in The Science of Success

By the way, The Science of Success is a splendid book. I highly encourage you to check it out and give it a read… or like seven reads. I linked it below.

Gratitude Done Right

Gratitude is not about just throwing out meaningless thank yous left and right. Being grateful is a practice that should be appreciated itself. Wow, gratitude for gratitude lol… anyway, here is a little formula for being grateful that will help you get maximum benefits from it.

1. Pick something to be grateful for, tangible (e.g. your coffee) or intangible (e.g. love).
2. Understand why you are grateful for it. This allows you to see why it is of benefit to you.
3. Truly feel the gratitude within you. Think about how lucky you are to have or be able to do what it is you are showing gratitude to.

This process can take like four seconds, so don’t think you have to carve out an hour of your day to feel gratitude for something. You’ll know you’ve done it right because, by the time you reach the third part, you will be smiling and feeling uplifted.

For Big and Small

It is relatively easy to be thankful for major things like family, health, finding a job we love, or winning the lottery. But if we look a notch or two down, there are spectacular things to be grateful for all around it. For illustrative purposes, imagine a pyramid. It is easy to be grateful for the things at the top, but there are comparatively few of them. If we look at the layers below, they may not be as grand, but they are way more expansive.

So be grateful for the major things. But also be grateful for the green grass outside or the smell of coffee or the sound of birds chirping or the feeling you get when you make a new friend. All of these tiny and miraculous things exist and we can live a life of bliss if we choose to acknowledge them.

Like I said in the third step above, think about how lucky you are to have x, feel y, or be able to do z. When you stop taking the little things for granted, you begin to find gratitude everywhere.

It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only the wise men are able to understand them.

Paulo Coehlo in The Alchemist

For Good and Bad

It is crucial that we use gratitude in the hard times as well, not just the times when things are going well and life is easy. We can find reasons to be grateful for things we like, but what if we could find reasons to be grateful for the things we don’t initially like?

For example, say you get fired at work. Damn, that sucks because maybe you don’t have a stable income anymore or get to see your co-workers who you really liked, etc. But reframe it. It’s an opportunity to start over, to find something you like better, to work on a new skill and make use of it, to start your own business instead of finding another job, to spend more time with your family, or to travel the world.

Let’s look at a more everyday example… you are stuck in traffic. Oh no, you’re going to be late and you are wasting time just sitting there. Orrrr, it is a chance to listen to your favorite music or podcast, work on your patience, and smile at a fellow driver also stuck in the traffic to brighten their day just a tad.

The reframing of these non-desirable situations may seem silly. But if you can find a reason to be grateful no matter what, you will transform your mind such that no matter what happens, you will be happy and content. You gain control of your experience instead of letting your experience control you. That is the true power of gratitude.

One more point here: complaining is basically the opposite of gratitude. It’s just looking for and highlighting problems, instead of the good. If you find yourself complaining, immediately stop. It does you and everyone around you absolutely no good at all. Replace the complaint with gratitude, even if it seems awkward and unnatural. Choose to see things beneficially: Life is a Set of Choices. Ultimately, this will lead you to find the good in each and every situation. Even the things that seem bad and painful give way to underlying lessons and opportunities if we choose to seek them out.

Always

Life provides plentiful evidence of its magnificence every single day. With gratitude, we can choose to harness and appreciate moments/situations so they can work for our greater good. Start off your morning by listing a few things you are grateful for and do the same before you sleep to bookend your day with pleasant feelings and happiness. And then begin to fill as much as the time between with gratitude as well. Once it becomes a habit, it won’t take any extra time or effort. You will just default to seeing wondrous things and feeling immense gratitude for them.

Thank you for reading! 🙂