Gratitude is the Path to Happiness - by Saratoga
Gratitude gives you control over your experience of happiness. By consciously cultivating gratitude, you can generate an ongoing experience of fulfillment, joy, and optimism.
On the other hand, if you wait to be happy, and then assume you will feel grateful afterwards, you might wait for a very long time. Waiting to be happy means that you are depending on things outside of your control to create a positive experience for you.
There are great advantages to feeling gratitude and thus happiness. Aside from the obvious fact that such things feel wonderful, they also lead to a positive sense of life in general. Gratitude offers us a greater sense of self-worth and self-esteem. It helps us to feel more deserving of even better outcomes in our lives.
Gratitude banishes negative thinking. It frees us from regret and generates optimism about the future. It helps us to stay centered and to act more kindly towards others. It is so much easier to feel motivated to produce more good in your life, when you are grateful for what you already have.
The best news is that gratitude is a state of mind that you can consciously enter into. You don't have to wait for anything special to happen first. Following are some practical steps you can take to cultivate gratitude and happiness in your life.
Let Go of the Past
Although the past can offer us many fond memories, it can also serve as a trap if we place too much emphasis on it right now. The fact is that the past exists only in our minds. Real life is always lived in the immediate moment of now. It is in that present moment that we actually experience happiness and joy.
If you allow your past to define your moment of today, you will not have your consciousness fully available to be grateful for what you have right now. In this case, you might feel hamstrung by loss, regret, or missed opportunities.
There is only one way that the past can serve you when it comes to gratitude. You can be grateful for whatever has happened that has made you a better person today. You can enjoy any former, positive memories that bring gladness to your heart. You can also retrieve any knowledge from prior experiences that will enhance your life today, and be grateful for the fact that you have that knowledge.
Letting go of the past actually requires trust. You have to trust that there are better things ahead. You have to be willing to create the space for a new day filled with surprises that are even better than you imagined. You have to know that you are worth an even better life than before.
Start with the Little Things
To cultivate a consciousness of gratitude, you should start with the small things first. These are the things that tend to be a part of your everyday life. There are probably hundreds of small things that occur for you every day that you can be grateful for.
These small things can be as simple as a quiet morning, a delicious cup of coffee or tea, a moment of affection with a pet or a loved one, or an easy drive to work. Maybe a family member or a co-worker greets you with a smile, and their good mood rubs off on you. Perhaps you receive a bit of good news that you weren't expecting.
Practice taking in these tiny moments of joy, and allow them to register in your conscious mind. Life might be far better than you imagined when you actually pay attention.
When you notice these small moments of joy, acknowledge them to yourself. Say things to yourself like "Oh, that's so pretty" or "I love this" or "This feels so good". By changing your self-talk to that of gratitude, you will automatically elevate your experience to a greater level of happiness.
This is a very different approach than the more typical one of amplifying small, annoying things. Instead of amplifying negative small things and allowing them to change our moods for the worst, we amplify the multitude of positive things that we can be grateful for. And there is probably a far greater abundance of these small, positive things than there are those that annoy us.
Become More Aware
How much of your day is spent inside your head thinking about things? If you spend too much time thinking and then reacting to your own thoughts with even more thinking, you will miss a lot. Thinking is good when combined with awareness, but it can be a total distraction if you are unconscious about what is going on around you.
Try this little exercise. Decide to give your brain a rest for a few minutes. Doesn't that idea sound good? Just let your mind relax, and instead of thinking about things, be aware instead. The amazing thing about awareness is that it is only possible in the now.
Take note of the fact that worry, fear, and anxiety are directly tied to past and future. Without past and future, those experiences simply have no anchor. They cannot exist in the purest moment of now. These negative experiences will always supplant your experience of gratitude. This is because they take you out of the now, and distract you into an imaginary, negative future which literally doesn't yet exist.
Because awareness must be experienced in the now, it allows you to relax your mind and take in the beauty of the moment. This is where you will find your experience of gratitude. This is where you can feel happiness.
Try giving yourself a mental break from thinking at least several times throughout the day. Relax into a natural awareness, and you will immediately start noticing things that you can feel grateful for in the moment.
Imagine Your Future
Once you have cultivated an experience of gratitude, you will naturally want to expand upon that experience. As you practice living in this consciousness of positive energy, you will begin to feel that you actually have a great life. From here it is only natural to want to create more of it.
Gratitude will increase your level of confidence and self-esteem. It fills you to your core with the nourishing energy of happiness. When you are fulfilled in this way, you learn to believe in yourself again. You start to believe that you can do it! Maybe you can create the life of your dreams. You start to believe you are worth it.
The beautiful thing about gratitude is that it truly is an act of self love. It is an act of appreciating yourself and your life. You will naturally expand upon this experience by forecasting a similar future for yourself. You will begin to look ahead with a very positive attitude.
As you imagine this very bright future of possibilities, you will feel even more inclined to create it. Your current level of happiness will propel you with motivation and the strength to take positive action in your life.
You will find it easier and easier to make plans for a future life that you can feel even more grateful for. Gratitude and happiness promote even more of the same!
Copyright © 2016 by Saratoga Ocean/Telstar Events, Inc.
