Why Gratitude is the Key to Happiness!

What is all the hype about gratitude? Why is it so important and how can I become more grateful?

If I could teach my children one valuable lesson in life it would be that Gratitude is the key to happiness!

Eckhart Tolle

“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”

We spend so much of life wanting what we don’t have or thinking ‘when this happens I will be truly happy’. But the truth is that this is conditional happiness- just like if I was to say, “When my husband does *%$&, I will love him,” this is putting conditions on my love, we do exactly the same with our happiness, we constantly put conditions on our happiness.

So how can we live in unconditional happiness? We can start with gratitude! Gratitude is one of the most effective methods for increasing long term life satisfaction.

Gratitude is the practice of being grateful for this very moment, regardless of what is happening. Most of us associate gratitude with saying ‘thank you’ to someone for something they have done or given to us. But gratitude is not just an action, it is a positive emotion, in fact it is one of the highest human emotions we can access.

Now it’s easy to be grateful when we are feeling positive and life is good but when we are feeling low and life is not going the way we would like it to, getting grateful can be more difficult.

When we are feeling low, we need to look for something in the situation to be grateful for. My two favourite affirmations that I use when I am feeling low and I’m looking for something to be grateful for is… ‘No matter what, something good comes out of everything’ and ‘Something amazing is going to happen to me today!’ Just the simple act of saying these affirmations immediately opens me up to being grateful, I immediately move up the emotional scale to positive expectation and from this point I can find something to be grateful for which immediately moves me further up the scale.

Cara Alwill Leyba

“Gratitude is the practise of shifting the focus from what's missing to what already exists.”

Why is Gratitude so important?

1. Gratitude increases positive emotions such as joy, positive expectation, eagerness and passion. When we are feeling grateful, we automatically feel positive emotions.

2. Gratitude removes negative emotions. The simple act of getting grateful moves us from negative emotions into positive emotions. When we are feeling positive emotions our thoughts are positive and we bring more positive things into our life, after all what we think about we move towards right?

3. Gratitude turns what we have into enough. It makes us grateful for what we have and not what we don’t have.

4. Studies have shown that gratitude actually makes you happier, improving your immune system, lowing blood pressure, making people more likely to exercise and eat right and improving sleep quality and quantity.

5. Feeling grateful can make you more social as when we are grateful and living in positive emotions we tend to be more generous, compassionate and forgiving.

Brene Brown

“I don't have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness, it's right in front of me if I am paying attention and practicing gratitude.”

Gratitude is a skill, we can train ourselves to be more grateful and with practice and the right perspective, there will always be many things to be grateful for.

10 Simple Ways to Get Grateful Every Day

1. Get a gratitude journal and spend 5-10 minutes a day writing down what you are grateful for. I like to do this at the end of the day so I can reflect on things that happened during my day but you can do it at the beginning and reflect over the previous day. You can write a list of things you are grateful for or write freely about one event or several events. You can choose anything to write about, the sunset, a great conversation, a warm house, a delicious lunch, something at work or something you did well.

My favourite Gratitude Journal is Insite Mind’s Grateful Daily Journal. This journal helps create a daily practice of positivity by appreciating what you have now and focusing on what you want to come. There is a side for writing what you are grateful for now and then a section to focus on being grateful for what we don’t have yet, I love this! Being grateful for what we don’t have yet, what an awesome way to move us towards our future hopes and dreams!

2. Send a text or email to someone thanking them for who they are or something they have done.

3. Notice the beauty in nature each day.

4. Meditate on the things you are grateful for.

5. Go on a mindful walk.

6. Smile more often (it’s contagious).

7. Read inspiring quotes and affirmations to get you into a positive mindset. I highly recommend the Insite Mind Oh Happy Day and Oh Happy Life Affirmation Cards!

8. Take time to breathe

9. Thank the casual acquaintances who make your life easier: Uber drivers, shop assistance, waitresses, nurses etc.

10. Live more mindfully- be grateful for the now and don’t worry so much about the past or the future.

As we practice gratitude daily it becomes a new habit and before long, whenever something negative happens in our life we automatically look for something to be positive about which results in us living a much happier life!