It is much easier to be ungrateful for all the things, in this time and world, we all are a part of. The never-ending need for material accumulation is stitched in the fabric of our society. We are rarely satisfied with what we have on our plate. The consumerism is embedded deep in all of us. Wherever we see, it just reminds us of how little we have and not how much we have to be grateful for.
It may sound dubious but we all should try to be grateful, no matter what is happening in our life. Even if you are stuck in a turmoil or the world around you is collapsing, you have to learn to be grateful.
How can it change your life
It is funny that we don’t realize how much we have to be grateful for. You do not realize it until you start writing what all you are grateful for. It is so common yet so strange that we take so many things in our life for granted. We consider them as a given truth of our lives. Things like a roof over our head, food on our plate, and clothes that we have on our body. We consider it to be there for us, but for a large chunk of people out there, it is not the case. The following are the five ways that can help you be more grateful:
1. It shifts your focus
Gratitude is one of the strongest tools that can fill your life with much needed/deserved positivity. It can shift your focus and perspective towards a lot of things in life. People are right when they say we move towards things we are focussed on. When we live in a perpetual state of lack ness, we only pick negativity from things existing around us. Conversely, it is easy for you to see positivity even the time of crisis if you are in a positive light. All of the changes take time. It requires patience and habitual restraining, but it does change for good. The key is to write things down, it makes it more real rather than abstract concepts residing in your head.
2. It has a lasting effect on your happiness
Two researchers based out of Berkeley in the United States conducted research in this area. They took two groups of people, one group had people who wrote gratitude letters every day for three months and the other didn’t. The experiment was to study how people from both the groups, process information differently. The researcher took fMRI scans of the subjects in both groups. The results demonstrated that the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation of their medial prefrontal cortex. It is the area of your brain responsible for learning and decision making.
3. It seeds faith in your self
Gratitude helps you by instilling the belief that you are not alone in whatever you are. It reminds you that whatever you are going through shall pass. It helps you see your goals with much more clarity, and you can see yourself victorious at the end of the ride. Not just that you will be more sympathetic, empathetic, and sensitive to the plight of other beings.
4. Helps you fight your fears
It is a simple fact that you can not be scared and greatful both at any single point. Both fear and gratitude are diametrically opposite to each other. You are most fearful when you feel that things are getting out of your hands. We tend to hyperbole a single bad possibility and let ourselves drown in that. Being grateful, on the other hand, puts you in a state of abundance. It reminds you to be more thankful and grateful for what you have.
5. Motivates you to reach your goal
Gratitude lets you succeed and achieve whatever you want by creating a platform of internal success. It just makes the seemingly terrible path towards success achievable in all possible ways. Just think of it like this, if you are so distracted with the negativities and bad vibrations around you. How can you push yourself relentlessly towards your goal? Interweave this habit of showing gratitude in your daily routine and you will see significant changes in your life. But remember it will not happen over night, like every other thing in the world.