You’ve probably heard it said that what you focus on, expands. In the same vein, when you show Gratitude, the Universe sends you more to feel grateful for.

Gratitude is one of life’s most vital ingredients, and there is so much research that supports that premise. The practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting effects on your body: it can lower blood pressure, it can heal injuries faster, improve immune function, and promote happiness and well-being. Gratitude can also bring amazing experiences into your life; it can make success more attainable, it can help you achieve your goals and it can make you more magnetic and attractive to your desires.

Whether gratitude springs from the acceptance of someone’s kindness or appreciation of the beauty and majesty of Nature, gratitude enhances all spheres of human experience. Even gratitude for its own sake, brings many emotional and psychological benefits.

Some of our best memories are those in which we have been on the receiving end of generous acts of others towards us. What is interesting though, is that, even though there is so much to be grateful for in life, our minds have a tendency to perceive negative input – we tend to notice and pay attention more often to what it going wrong rather than what is going right in our lives.

This makes sustaining a grateful outlook or attitude quite difficult. We either ignore or take for granted what is good about life while we whine constantly about our frustrations and irritations. We display a lack of skill in managing our mental and emotional states with gratitude because we genuinely don’t know how; which is interesting since we all have the tools to transform every moment into gratitude.

There is, of course, a big difference in knowing what we ought to do and what we actually do. Psychologists call this the knowledge to performance gap. In the same way, there is a huge gap between knowing what we ought to feel grateful for and how we actually feel, even when we want to.

Gratitude is about practice. It’s about continual mindfulness. So, it’s also a self-care muscle that can be exercised and developed. In this case, the muscle is exercised to grow your mind and direct your actions toward gratefulness. Through practice, giving thanks can become second nature. We certainly increase our connection with each other. A Russian proverb states: Gratitude waters old friendships and makes new ones grow.

Benefits of cultivating gratitude:

• Increased feelings of self-worth
• Improved self-confidence
• Solidified social relationships
• Increased feelings of security
• Generosity and helpfulness
• Prolonged enjoyment of pleasurable experiences
• Improved heart health
• A greater sense of purpose
• Improved coping with stress
• More feelings of happiness
• Motivation to successfully achieve goals

One of the best ways of cultivating gratitude remains the use of a gratitude journal. Another way, is to play a gratitude game where you try to come up with as many things to be grateful for as possible – all within 3 minutes. It’s a fun game to play out loud with kids because it helps you teach them about gratitude and feeling grateful. It is a good way to help children learn to integrate gratefulness into ‘normal’ life.

Questions to ask yourself regarding gratitude:

• How do I get from feeling gratitude to being grateful?
• Is gratitude something only for positive people?
• How can I feel gratitude here and now?
• What are the mental tools that allow and foster gratitude?
• In what ways can I demonstrate gratitude?

These questions can be posed during meditation. Allow all the parts of the self to make a contribution and to have an opinion.

After practicing in this way for approximately 40 days, you will have programmed the subconscious mind to activate gratitude more naturally. Besides, the only reason some people refuse to feel grateful, is because they don’t want to change. Gratitude, like love, always changes you for the better.

Join The EQ GYM this Sunday for a complimentary session. In this session, you will dig deeper into this topic and take you through a guided meditation for you to start building up your gratitude. Sign up for free here! 

No worries if you are reading this article a bit late. Every Sunday, we are discussing a new Self-Muscle, so just jump on whatever Sunday is coming up! 

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See you Sunday!

With Love, The EQ GYM Team. 

This is a guest post. Any opinions expressed are the writer’s own.