It takes awareness to live with gratitude daily, but when done consistently life becomes so much richer. Here are 3 reasons to strive for a grateful way of life and 3 ways to practice it daily.
If you are a friend of AYCLimitless.com, you may have already learned about me and why I started a website to share my love of self-help, self-development and self-care. In my very first blog, It's Never Too Late to Turn a New Page, I share how my lymphoma diagnosis in my 40s sparked my awareness to live with more mindfulness and gratitude.
November is my annual checkup month with my oncologist. This year marks the 7th year since I was first diagnosed with (non-gastric) M.A.L.T Lymphoma. I was very lucky to have caught it early and that my initial treatment was successful. The doctor now lists my condition as marginal zone lymphoma and I only require blood work once a year to monitor my status.
I have just been cleared for another year. 🎊🎉🙌 (Insert knock on wood here.)
Every year in the weeks leading up to my appointment, I struggle to stay mindful of my negative thoughts as I worry if this is the year that something changes. Every year around this time, I have to work extra hard at gratitude and reminding myself of all that I have to be grateful for.
When I struggle with maintaining a gratitude mindset, it's easy for me to fall into a melancholy mood and feel lethargic. The small cracks of worry and doubt grow quickly and even manifest in strange dreams and poorer sleep quality.
It's amazing how the primitive brain is wired to respond to fear with automatic fight-or-flight responses that make us think of worst-case scenarios. Even after the doctor has given me the green light for this year's blood work, my mind is still grappling with little seeds of doubt.
So this week I am strengthening my gratitude mindset with gratitude affirmations and reminding myself why it's important to practice consistently. Here are my 3 reasons to strive for a grateful way of life and 3 ways to practice it daily.
Reason 1: Gratitude Helps You To See More Opportunities
Practicing gratitude doesn't mean that you are only focusing on positivity. It's about building skills in mindfulness and empowering yourself to choose how you respond to negativity, adversity, challenges and stress.
Gratitude is reframing the things that happen in our lives to help us make sense of it.
When we appreciate the good things that happen in our lives with gratitude, we become aware of what gives us joy, contentment, laughter, love and happiness. Being aware of when we feel these emotions helps us be able to manifest more of them.
When we reflect on the bad things in life through the perspective of gratitude, we are not looking for silver linings, we are looking for learning and growth to be able to move through challenges, negativity and adversity.
Striving to live with gratitude daily trains our minds to be aware of what we are feeling and thinking. When we are aware, then we can choose the thoughts and emotions that create a healthy mindset and proactive behaviour which leads to new opportunities and solutions.
Daily Gratitude Practice Tip:
If you keep a daily to-do list, use a gratitude perspective when creating the list at the start of your day. Instead of hurriedly listing your chores and obligations, take a moment to note what you have to be grateful for with each task.
Here's an example:
To-Do Task | Gratitude Check |
|---|---|
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Can you feel the difference in how you would approach your routine daily to-do list? Can you see the opportunities to achieve a sense of value and meaning from your everyday tasks? Instead of just a list of tedious tasks, I now look at the benefits that they add to my family, my friend and my colleagues.
Reason 2: Gratitude Helps You Live Life More Intentionally
If I were to ask you to describe what rain smells like, can you?
If I were to ask you to describe your loved one's voice, can you?
If I were to ask you what the fur of your cat or dog feels like, can you?
If I were to ask you to describe a loved one's face when they are happy, can you?
When I was diagnosed with my lymphoma, it was found in strange tissue growth inside the lower lid of my left eyeball. I had to have two surgeries to remove as much of the tissue growth as possible. I was scared to death that I would need more surgeries and that it would impact my vision. Luckily, I did not.
I am an artist, a creative, and a writer. If you were to ask me which of my senses I could not live without, it would be my sight. As an artist, it is a primary way I experience and appreciate the world.
Once I recovered from my eye surgeries, I was even more aware of the visual details in all aspects of my life. It was not just the spectacular sunsets that I appreciated, it was the stormy skies too. It was not just the colourful flowers that I admired, but the rich tones of the earth and the trees.
I had always been an active observer of people, but now even more so. I love seeing the expressions on the faces of people I interact with. I relished, even more, the day-to-day in-person "face time" with loved ones. Trying to capture their faces in my brain and my heart should I ever lose my ability to see in the future.
We live so much of our lives on auto-pilot that we miss out on so much of what's around us at any given moment. Our daily interactions can feel muted, dulled or sound monotone. To sense it all would be overwhelming.
But focusing our gratitude on appreciating more of the world and the people around us makes life much more vivid.
Daily Gratitude Practice Tip:
For each day of the week, focus on mindfulness and gratitude using one of your senses. Make a daily note of what you have learned, experienced and gained from the focus. For example:
Monday - See With Gratitude: Appreciate the things and people you see in more detail for a day. What did you discover and learn and how are you grateful for the beauty of sight?
My List:
- Happy dogs with smiles as they walk their humans in the morning make me smile.
- Faces of tired commuters as they face their Monday make me wonder how they spent their weekend.
- The vibrant colour of the trees in the park that I pass on the way to work makes me feel energized.
Tuesday - Hear With Gratitude: Appreciate the sounds of your day with more active awareness. What did you discover and learn and how are you grateful for the gift of sound?
My List:
- My 6 am mother nature alarm clock of chatty sparrows outside my window sill makes me feel like Snow White.
- The rhythm of morning and evening traffic going to and from the office hums differently like the mood of the commuters.
- The sound of my husband's voice when he greets me at the end of his work day makes my heart skip a beat still after all these years together.
By focusing on one sensory experience each day you are building overall awareness and experiencing life more intentionally with gratitude.
Reason 3: Gratitude Makes Life Richer
In my blog Why an Abundance Mindset is Needed More Than Ever, I share the benefits of seeing the world with an abundance mindset vs. a scarcity mindset.
I first learned the concept of Abundance Mentality from one of the most impactful books I have read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey.
Dr. Covey describes the Abundance Mindset as:
"A deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits and decision-making. It opens up possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity... It recognizes the unlimited possibilities for positive interactive growth and development, creating new third alternatives."
When you focus on the things you don't have in life, you will only see more of what you don't have. When you focus on what you do have in life, you will see how rich your life is.
Gratitude is to adopt an abundance mindset and appreciate what's in your life and life itself.
When you recognize and appreciate all that you have to be grateful for, the ripple effect is finding contentment, satisfaction and joy.
Daily Gratitude Tip:
If you are not a journal keeper, you can still reap the benefits with a quick gratitude reflection exercise at the end of each day. I call it "A Penny for Your Gratitude Thoughts".
Keep a notepad on your nightstand and at the end of each evening reflect on your day and jot down 3-5 things that you are grateful for today. Each thought of gratitude is worth a penny. Example:
Day 1:
Penny 1 - I am grateful for my delicious avocado and cream cheese bagel breakfast.
Penny 2 - I am grateful for the afternoon of running errands together with my husband.
Penny 3 - I am grateful that my sons take the time to respond to my texts promptly even with their busy lives.
At the end of each week, see how many pennies you have. At the end of each month, reflect on your wealth of gratitude.
Training your mind to be grateful for what you have in life and what life has to offer makes life so much richer.
Grateful is a Way of Life
My journey to a grateful way of life is a daily work in progress.
Human nature dwells easily on the negative rather than the positive simply as a part of our instinct to protect ourselves from possible dangers and threats. If you read my blog Finding Super Strength in Adversity, you will understand why my experiences with adversity have made me more susceptible to the fear of things going wrong.
A mindset of gratitude helps us to understand that our experiences have meaning and value even in times of adversity and challenge. Training our brains to react differently and breaking the negative thought cycle can help us to react and recover better in times of stress and worry.
Living with gratitude helps us to see more of life's opportunities, live more intentionally, and make life richer in value and meaning.
I end this week with a favourite gratitude affirmation from Brene Brown and hope you can find joy in the ordinary moments of each day with gratitude.
Here are some additional reading recommendations to help you strive for gratitude daily:
The Gifts of Imperfection - Book by Brene Brown
How to Make Gratitude a Daily Habit - Online Article - Mindful.org
40 Simple Ways to Practice Gratitude - Online Article - LifeHack.org
6 Ways to Be More Grateful and Why It Is Worth It - Online Article - psychcentral.com
I would love to hear your comments!
What gratitude practices do you have in your life?
How has a gratitude mindset helped you with living life more vividly?
Contact me with a hello and your details and I will send you a printable PDF file of the beautiful gratitude affirmation images from this week's post.
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Great article. I really enjoy it.