Gratitude
It’s not happiness that brings Gratitude… It’s Gratitude that brings happiness!
If you’re like most people, you probably spend more time thinking about what goes wrong each day than what goes right. After all, it’s human nature to seek out problems to solve.
•   Did you spend your morning commute stressed out about the traffic?
•   Did you grumble and frown when you didn’t get napkins with your food order at the drive-thru?
•   Did you grow impatient with the lady in line at the supermarket who was having trouble with the credit card machine?
•   Are you one of those people who always sees the glass as half full?
Over time all this fault-finding becomes a habit that can leave us feeling overwhelmed, negative or even depressed.
Sure, there’s plenty of negativity in the world, but we only add to it when we notice it and then complain about it. We spread it to all the people we interact with, creating even more negativity.
So how can we break the fault-finding cycle and create more happiness in our lives?
By practicing gratitude!
When was the last time you thought about the things in your life that you are grateful for? After all most of us have many wonderful things in our lives. Health, food, clean water, a good job, or a loving family are just a few examples. But many of us take the good things in our lives for granted, allowing the negativity of the world to shape our viewpoint and affect our attitude.
The Gratitude Challenge
So here’s a challenge for you…
For the next 30 days write down just 3 things each day that you are grateful for. But here’s the catch – you can’t write down any one thing more than once.
At the end of 30 days you will have written down 90 things that you’re grateful for. Plus, I’d be willing to bet you’ll be happier at the end of the 30 days than when you started.
Don’t believe gratitude can create happiness? Give the gratitude challenge a try and find out for yourself.
The truth is that while human beings are wired to seek out problems to solve, we also have the capacity to reflect on the blessings in our lives. Balancing all the negativity in the world with just a little gratitude can dramatically improve your life and the lives of those closest to you. We’d love to see your gratitude list in the comments!
