Have A Grateful Day!
A fun thing to do which contributes to a happier life is to create a grateful day: simply put, it consists of making gratitude your objective for one full day.
This is a very rewarding exercise for many reasons... read on!
Living a grateful day brings in many benefits:
- It helps you realize the large number of things you have and enjoy.
So many times we take what we enjoy for granted and we only appreciate it when it's lost, such as having good health or comfortable shoes or a warm house.
- It helps you relax and get rid of stress as you deepen into a sense of gratitude and acknowledgement for what you do have.
Besides, a heightened sense of appreciation yields even more things to be appreciative for. Gratitude opens the doors for peace and abundance to come in. - Complaints disappear! After you have practiced being grateful for a while, complaints don't seem to make sense anymore, because for anything that you could complain about there is also something you can be grateful about.
Little by little you start complaining less, naturally. In many ways, life becomes easier when you switch from complaints to gratitude.
Besides, living a grateful day is perfect to avoid falling into anxiety or worry.
This is because your thoughts can only be focused on one thing at a time, and when you put your attention on being grateful you leave no room for complaints or negativity.
How to create a grateful day?
The only one thing that you need is to live in the present so that you can realize what's going on at each moment: situations that are favorable to you, things you receive or enjoy, all types of circumstances that give you a chance to be thankful.
The best tool to live in the present and gain focus is your breath. By focusing on your breath (inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale) your awareness of the moment you're living increases.
You find yourself more alert yet relaxed, as if "awake" to a clearer reality - thus you're more able to realize those things you can be grateful for.
To create your grateful day, decide to focus on your breath and make sure that it is slow and deep, no matter what you do.
The following is an outline of a grateful day:
- After you wake up, and still lying or sitting on the bed, breath in and out slowly, consciously, for about three to five times. Still breathing consciously, focus on the fact that you are alive to a new day.
This brand new day brings you more opportunities to love, smile, laugh, enjoy, have fun, discover something new, enjoy time with people...
Feel gratitude not only for the chance to enjoy another day of life, but also for your senses which will allow you to do that: smell, touch, sight… - Always in the present moment, start going through the motion of your day.
So you're taking a shower: "Thank you for the hot water"; you're dressing up: "Thank you for I have clothes to wear"; you're having breakfast: "Thank you for the food available to me"; you're going to work: "Thank you, for this job gives me a good salary every month"... - Use spare moments to practice gratitude. It is unavoidable that you will be dragged into doing your work, or any other tasks you have to do, and you'll be focused on the task at hand.
When you have a spare moment again, return to being thankful: you could focus on what is around you, such us a comfortable office or a glass of clean water, or in yourself (the fact that you can walk, or that you can feel inner qualities like peace and love, or simply the miracle of you being alive). - Before going to bed, take a few moments to quickly go through the main things that happened in your grateful day.
What are those things that you were thankful for that you had never realized before, yet have always been there? What were you thankful for that was completely unexpected?
Can you see that you have probably given thanks more than thirty times throughout the day (hopefully many more)?
Did you think of yourself being as rich as you actually are when you started your grateful day?
Taking it forward
Now you know that the feeling of gratitude is always at hand, and that you can choose to have a fabulous day by focusing on what it is you are grateful for. Even more:
- You can choose to keep a gratitude journal to record those things you are grateful for daily.
- You can set up hourly reminders on your electronic calendar or on your alarm clock to consciously stop and be grateful for a few minutes when the alarm goes off.
- You can incorporate being grateful to your life (and even create a positive habit of it) by taking a few minutes daily, perhaps before going to sleep, to meditate on gratitude and the richness that it brings to your life.
Gratitude is the easiest way to put yourself in a positive and open mood. Make gratitude a daily practice!
"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."
Joseph Campbell
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