Gratitude Changed My Life
What can I say about gratitude? It has changed my life completely!
If you only take one thing away from this website, I hope it is to introduce more gratitude into your life. There is a famous saying, ‘it is not happiness that brings you gratitude, but gratitude that brings you happiness’ and this has proved to be so true for me. Being grateful for what you have makes you realise how lucky you are and how amazing it is to be alive. Practicing gratitude is one of the first things I do each morning and the last thing I do before I go to sleep. I’m sure you will be able to find your own ways to feel and practice gratitude, but here are a few of the things I have found effective.
Gratitude Meditation (Silence)
Each morning I listen to my gratitude meditation. I love this meditation so much that I have listened to it nearly every day for many years now, and have never become bored with it. The first half of the meditation focuses on what you are grateful for, your loved ones, your friends, comforts, senses etc. The second half focuses on imagining your ideal life in as much vivid detail as possible. What would your home be like? your finances? your love life? By the end of the meditation, you feel like the luckiest person alive and feel ready to take on the world. It highlights things that we usually take for granted and helps to put things into perspective. One of the most powerful sections for me is the image of losing some of the things we take for granted such as our home, loved ones or health. We then imagine getting each one of them back and how grateful we are for all the things we already have.
Gratitude Journal (Scribe)
Another practice I use is a gratitude journal. Every night when I get into bed, I write down three things that I am grateful for that day. I try to be quite specific because otherwise there’s a danger of writing down the same few things every day. They be huge or they can be very simple, but they should be really personal to you.
Gratitude Jar
A gratitude jar is another simple but effective way to focus your attention on the good things in your life. This is something that I introduced to the whole family as it made it more fun. Every time you find something to be grateful for, you write it on a piece of paper and add it to the jar without sharing it with anyone else. On New Year’s Eve, we empty the jar and read all the things we were grateful for that year. It’s a really up-lifting, heart-warming thing to do.
Gratitude Stone
I always keep a special stone in my pocket throughout the day. It’s a small, smooth stone that my daughter painted a tiny picture of her and her brother onto. Whenever I put my hand into my pocket, I feel the stone and it is a physical reminder that I have so much to be grateful for.
You can download my gratitude meditation in the ‘meditation’ section or print out a worksheet to help create your own gratitude practice from the ‘printables’ section.