Embracing Gratitude

We hear a lot now about the topic of ‘Gratitudes’ on social media and it’s really catching on that engaging in the daily practice of gratitudes is a healthy thing to do. This is fantastic news and music to my ears! And it’s so easy and simple to do!

Getting into the habit of embracing gratitude takes practice and commitment for it to become most beneficial. It’s a process that develops and amazingly becomes easier to engage in over time. Thankfully, it only takes a small amount of time and commitment out of our day to build gratitude into our lives and experience the benefits.

Let’s look at gratitude at the most basic level and then how it can become such a wonderful experience that we would not go a day without giving consideration to all those things in our lives that we really appreciate.

When we start practicing gratitudes, we can struggle at times to find things we can be grateful for, being slightly out of tune with the constant blessings pouring through our lives every single day. Interestingly, it’s the most basic things in life that we need to focus on, such as having the ability to breathe clean air, living in a wonderful environment, having a body that works and can do amazing things, having sunshine in so many of our days, beautiful beaches and so on.

As we become more accustomed to practicing gratitudes, a significant change starts to take place that is quite phenomenal. We find that we start to see things differently and tend to stop taking things for granted. There are millions of things that we potentially take for granted that are huge blessings in our daily lives. As we develop this practice, connecting it with reality, it has a profound effect on our ability to live our lives in a more positive way. This empowers us to be inspired and focus on the good, helping us to turn away from negativity.

Staying positive tunes us into what’s good in life, including our own goodness!

This doesn’t mean that life is always a bed of roses and as we know, roses also have thorns! What it does mean is that we can become more alerted to solving the challenges that come our way rather than being overwhelmed by them.

Some research has demonstrated that practicing regular gratitude reduces the prevalence and severity of depression. This is amazing… yet it also makes so much sense!

To start a daily practice of gratitudes, you could start with the following:

1. Every morning as soon as you wake up, get into the practice of saying THANK YOU! Tune into your heart to see what comes up.

2. Every morning find 3 THINGS you are grateful for. See if you can discover new things each day rather than repeating the same things each day.

3. Every evening at the end of your day, no matter what challenges you’ve faced, think of 3 THINGS you are grateful for and give thanks. You may want to include being able to overcome some of the challenges that have come your way throughout your day.

Continue this practice and over time you’re very likely to notice some changes in yourself and how you may be approaching life differently and in a more positive way.

NOTE: YOU WILL FIND A FREE GUIDED MEDITATION ON GRATITUDE ON THE RESOURCES PAGE OF MY WEBSITE IF YOU NEED SOME GUIDANCE TO GET STARTED.

Sending love and blessings, Wendy J 💜