How to Recognize the Positives in Your Life and Practice Being Grateful for Them
Rev. Dr. Kitty Boitnott, NBCT, RScP
Heart-Centered Career Transition and Job Search Coach | Life Strategies Coaching
Let's be honest. The news is consistently filled with all sorts of horrific events daily. The media covers almost exclusively the bad stuff that happens because that is what people listen to. The trouble is that it can color our view of the world when we focus on the negative instead of the positive.
As a result, it is understandable if you have started to feel a little depressed or cynical about the state of the world. "Can we all just get along?" as Rodney King once now famously asked, seems like an impossible request these days.
But it should be something we seek to do.
Like the news, it is easy to focus on the things that aren't going right in our lives instead of the things that are.
I want to challenge you to consider how much better your life would seem if you could focus on the positive things more and practice being consciously and actively grateful for them.
There are two aspects of being a happier, more fulfilled person. One is awareness, and the other is gratitude. I will show you what I mean.
Awareness
Awareness is the state of being conscious. It may also be thought of as mindfulness.
Become more aware--or mindful--of the beauty in your life. Look around you at nature. Feel the soft breeze on your cheek. Watch the birds fly through the sky.
There is so much beauty around you that if you were to pay attention to it all every single day, it might leave you speechless.
But it should also make you grateful for the beauty that is all around you all the time.
If you have all your senses, be grateful. Consider the gift that your eyesight is, along with your sense of smell, taste, touch, and hearing. Even if you have lost one sense because of an illness or injury, chances are your other senses are heightened. And that is something for which to be grateful.
Consider the times you may have taken to watch a butterfly while on a walk. Or think about times that a bird has perched on the branch of a tree outside your window. Those moments are fleeting. If you aren't aware of your surroundings, you won't see them. So practice being more aware.
Gratitude
Gratitude is apart from awareness in that gratitude is the active appreciation for whatever you are aware of in your life for which you can give thanks. We tend to take so many of our blessings for granted without feeling gratitude. But when you focus on things to be grateful for, you tend to find even more things for which to be grateful!
It's like magic!!!
Gratitude is actually a powerful tool of the mind.
The more you are grateful and appreciative, the more you will have to be grateful in your life. It's like the law of gravity. Only it's referred to as the law of attraction.
Make it a commitment to practice being more aware of things in your life that you can feel grateful for. And then watch more things for which you can be grateful come your way. I promise you'll be glad you did.
Until next time.
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