This week we celebrated World Gratitude Day on 21 September. Yes, it really is a thing! And I took the opportunity to express my thanks to you for being part of my community.
I also shared a use anywhere, anytime 5 Things Gratitude Tool that you can download here if you haven’t already! I encourage you to experiment with gratitude and take all the opportunities you have to get into the frequency of gratitude and appreciation because that is a frequency that is harmonious with all you would love to create in your life.
Why do we focus on gratitude so much?
I think there are a number of reasons for this. The first being that it is so tangible for us – when we consider what we have to be thankful for, it lifts us up! We feel that uplift straight away so it is something that we can use, in the moment, to transform our experience of any situation.
If we’re feeling good anyway it enhances that experience. And if we’re feeling challenged, and still choose to focus our attention on what we have to be grateful for, either despite the challenge or for the hidden gifts within the challenge, that too lifts our spirits and enhances the experience.
Another reason why coaches, educators and health professionals all encourage a focus on Gratitude is because it is one of the most researched strategies in the positive psychology arsenal and the evidence indicates that it works!
Here’s what I quoted on Linked in this week from Harvard Health:
“In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.”
And here’s what Oprah has to say about gratitude:
“I live in the space of thankfulness – and for that, I have been rewarded a million times over. I started out giving thanks for small things, and the more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased. That’s because – for sure – what you focus on expands. When you focus on the goodness in life, you create more of it.”
What’s not to like?
My Linkedin article identified a number of ways you can cultivate gratitude in your life, including
- write a thank you note to people you appreciate in your life, whether they be family members or friends, colleagues or employees, or even people you don’t know but who have touched your life – send them a thank you note expressing your appreciation
- keep a gratitude journal – make a point of regularly capturing all that you are grateful for
- counting your blessings – the 5 Things Gratitude Tool is a handy resource for doing this practice!
- prayer and meditation as ways to noticing and expressing thanks for the good you perceive
If you don’t have a gratitude practice already, I encourage you to experiment with any or all of the above to see where it takes you.
If you do already have a gratitude practice and you want to uplevel it, I encourage you to commit to keeping a gratitude journal for 30 days. On day one, write 5 things you are grateful for. And then each day for the next 29 days keep adding at least one additional thing you are grateful for in your life.
The reason this uplevels your practice is that it calls on you to look for more to be grateful for and opens your eyes and heart to all that is there that you hadn’t been fully acknowledging. Again, the suggestion is to do this as an experiment and see where it takes you.
In any gratitude practice, the most important thing is not that you do the exercise but that you use the opportunity of doing to exercise to feel the gratitude. Allow your gratefulness and appreciation to fill your heart and expand outwards and you are creating a vibrational frequency harmonious with all the good you desire in your life. In a world where everything is energy and like attracts like, being on the frequency of gratitude attracts to you an abundance of blessings in all areas of your life.
If you would love to learn more about tools and strategies to support you in creating outcomes you love join me for the Vision Workshop on 9 October! This is a virtual deep dive to learn a reliable, repeatable, proven system for creating results you love. Tickets and details available here