Attitude of gratitude.
“There will always be someone that has more than you and there will always be someone that has less than you.”
This is a message most of us have heard from our mothers and probably the most hated. Because you were always told this when you were ranting and raving about how absolutely unfair the world is and you just want someone to agree with you, then they comfort you with THIS!!! WHAT? NO. Tell me life is unfair, tell me it will turn in my favor and tell me that I am right.
However much I wanted to fall deeper into my misery and will the world to change to my whims I realized that, that is impossible and continuing in this belief will just keep me on this roller-coaster of pain and misery.
Change happens by choice and not by chance, it was my choice to keep on blaming the world for all my problems. It was my choice to stay on the ride and it was my choice to not move away from the pain. However, later it was also my choice to get off that roller-coaster and develop an attitude of gratitude.
Here are some great ways to develop an attitude of gratitude so you can see what is right with the world and not focus on what is wrong with it.
- Keep a Gratitude Journal.Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal attributes, or valued people in your life.
- Remember the Bad.To be grateful in your current state, it is helpful to remember the hard times that you once experienced. When you remember how difficult life used to be and how far you have come, you set up an explicit contrast in your mind, and this contrast is fertile ground for gratefulness.
- Ask Yourself Three Questions.Reflect on three questions: “What have I received from __?”, “What have I given to __?”, and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”
- Learn Prayers of Gratitude.In many spiritual traditions, prayers of gratitude are considered to be the most powerful form of prayer, because through these prayers people recognize the ultimate source of all they are and all they will ever be.
- Come to Your Senses. Through our senses—the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear—we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a miraculous construction, but also a gift.
- Use Visual Reminders. Because the two primary obstacles to gratefulness are forgetfulness and a lack of mindful awareness, visual reminders can serve as cues to trigger thoughts of gratitude. Often times, the best visual reminders are other people.
- Make a Vow to Practice Gratitude.Write your own gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count my blessings each day,” and post it somewhere where you will be reminded of it every day.
- Watch your Language.Grateful people have a particular linguistic style that uses the language of gifts, givers, blessings, blessed, fortune, fortunate, and abundance. Not on words like never, unfair, if only, why me ect.
- Go Through the Motions.If you go through grateful motions, the emotion of gratitude should be triggered. Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude.
- Think Outside the Box.If you want to make the most out of opportunities to flex your gratitude muscles, you must creatively look for new situations and circumstances in which to feel grateful.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_ways_to_become_more_grateful1
Robert Emmons
