Happiness - Developing the Powerful Habit of Gratitude

Gratitude has the power to transform your life. It has the promise of bringing forth a bounty of joy and happiness from deep within you. It will connect you to a higher level of awareness and consciousness that in turn will create feelings that will transpire into powerful, positive joy-filled, radiant energy for you and all who come into contact with you.

If you are feeling a little glum, lost your spark for life or are feeling uninspired or stressed, the practice of daily gratitude is just the magic you need. You will notice your energy and emotions begin to transcend to higher levels as your awareness and practice of gratitude increases. You will find more and more around you worthy of your gratitude. You will begin to connect more deeply within as well as with people, nature and things around you.

Here are some great tips to create a powerful habit of gratitude to transform your life:

Tip 1: Give thanks for all the blessings in your life. You start by being grateful for the smallest of things and build up. For example ‘I am grateful for the water tap that gives me access to running water so I can create a drink each morning to get my day going. I am grateful for the person who invented the tap and the person who installed it in my home. I am grateful for the water that flows through the tap from great distances to cleanse and bring freshness to my body daily. I am so grateful for this magical gift that blesses my life each and every day.” Another example “I am grateful for each breath I take that moves through my body giving me life at this very moment. I am blessed with the fresh air of the earth that cleanses and oxygenates every cell in my body daily.” As you start thinking about things and people in your life to be grateful for, you will find the list growing, the positive energies increasing and more and more joyous and abundant happenings occurring in your life.

Tip 2: To ensure effectiveness of your gratitude practice to create positive, uplifting, joyous energy, you will commit to a minimum of 30 consecutive days for practicing gratitude. Start by setting set times such as when you first wake up and when you retire to bed each night. If you miss a day of gratitude reflection you commit to start the cycle again at day one the next day until you have achieved 30 days of continuous gratitude reflection. Why 30 days? Science tells us we need a minimum of 30 consecutive days of practice in order to incorporate the new practice into our lives as a habit.

Tip 3: Create a quiet moment to end your practice each day. Simply shut your eyes and start with three deep breaths, breathing in through the nose slowly filling your lungs and stomach. Then out through your mouth slowly until you empty the last pocket of air from your stomach. There are amazing benefits to be gained from this breathing exercise alone. It’s a great de-stressor and it releases toxins from the body. It creates a quiet place in the mind for your gratitude practice.

Tip 4: An option is to start a Gratitude journal. At the end of each day you enter all the things in your day that you are grateful for. You take this journal with you everywhere you go. Whenever you are waiting in a cue, sitting in a doctor’s room or eating your lunch, you bring it out and read it.

Tip: 5: If you are one of these people who never quite get around to establishing a new habit. As Yoda, the wise character from Star Wars, once said, "Don't think; do”. I use to be one of these people who read a lot of great books about gratitude and was inspired by the insights discovered but never got around to creating a habit to incorporate gratitude into my life. Until one day I wrote the word ‘gratitude’ and ‘thank you’ on sticky notes and placed them all around my home, in my car and even in my wallet so when I opened it I saw these words. I put them everywhere, in my car, inside my shoes, on the TV remote, my books, on the bathroom mirror and even on the food in my pantry. In my car at a stop light, I would say aloud what I was grateful for. It generated powerful emotions connected to the positive thoughts of gratitude I was summoning. When I was in a cue at the supermarket, I opened my purse and would silently read the word gratitude and thank you as I started the process of gratitude. I always noted my energy shifted and I started to smile from within. I had transformed shopping from being a stressful event to now feeling sincerely grateful for the convenience of food that I once took for granted. Even when I would open the refrigerator, notes of gratitude where now everywhere. I didn't worry about what people thought. I new this was transformational. Instead of feeling great and optimistic for a few minutes during my morning and evening routine, I felt the power of gratitude and its positive emotions throughout the day. The results were extraordinary. I had trained myself to shift emotionally. I flicked the switch on the way I looked at the world, the way I felt about my world.

When you start to focus on gratitude, you bring forth positive powerful emotions, your attitude shifts and your energy shifts. The key is to develop a habit of using gratitude more frequently throughout your day. Soon you will be feeling good rather than bad, joyful rather than sad, positive rather than negative. Now you have found the pathway to more happiness and joy.