So yesterday was world gratitude day and it was nice to see this topic get a bit of coverage. Daily gratitude is something I brought into my life about 6 months ago and it has made the most amazing difference to my life. I would be hard pressed to choose between my daily gratitude or my meditation session if it came to dropping one from my life. Thankfully I don’t have to!
Taking a few minutes from your day to appreciate some of the wonderful things in your life can put you in a completely different headspace. It’s very hard to feel low or negative when you are listing all the great things in your life!
Each morning I write down 3 things in my life I am grateful for and then I repeat this last thing at night. The day’s trivial stresses can be quickly washed away when you are grateful for the kids laying peacefully and in good health in a nice warm bed upstairs.
Doing this takes 5-6 minutes in the whole day. I know we are all busy and sure who has time for stuff like this right? Well we have 1440 minutes in each day and surely we can spare 5 to acknowledge how great our lives are.
How much time do we spend watching shite on TV that adds nothing to our lives but we can’t spare 5 minutes for happiness?
That old saying of “You don’t realise what you have until it’s gone” doesn’t have to ring true for us. Why not stop and appreciate what we have when we have it instead of looking back and regretting what we took for granted?
Our day to day lives are filled with activities dragging us from place to place. From work to shopping to collecting the kids our days seem like a constant race. Not taking the time to stop and appreciate why we are doing this can make it feel like a burden.
Stressed out from having to pop into the shops to grab dinner and then spend an hour at home cooking it? How about we appreciate the fact that we get sit down with our families and enjoy a fresh home cooked dinner?
Annoyed by the price of diesel? How about we appreciate the fact that we can sit our nice comfortable cars and can afford to put them on the road. It’s better than having to walk in the lashing rain!
Kids woke again last night and interrupted our sleep by coming into our beds? How about we are grateful that we offer them that safe and secure feeling they crave and realise that their childhood is gone in a blink of an eye. There will be plenty of long nights when they have grown up and we have no one to wake us for a hug.
Regardless of how stressful our day has been we all have 2-3 things that we could be grateful for in our lives. Taking time to acknowledge them is a massively underestimated tool.
As humans we are always striving for more, looking for more, feeling we need more. Maybe what we need is to slow down a bit and genuinely be grateful for what we already have.
Try it for a week. Grab a copybook or notepad and keep it beside your bed. Each morning or night, even both, simply write down 3 things you are grateful for.
I promise you it will make a big difference to your life!
Enjoy your day