Living with Gratitude
What would it actually mean to live every single day with gratitude and appreciation in your heart?
In order to live each and every day with gratitude and appreciation means being thankful for everything that life brings your way. This of course means being thankful and appreciative for the good as well as the bad. It means being grateful for all the disappointments, setbacks and obstacles you suffer in exactly the same way you show appreciation for your victories and accomplishments.
To live with gratitude means continuously counting your blessings. Yes things might not have turned out as you had expected, but there is just so much else you have going for you. As such, to live with gratitude means recognizing everything you have that is good. All these things are blessings that bring incredible joy and happiness to your life.
Speaking of joy, to live with gratitude means to find joy in the smallest of things. Finding joy in the food you eat, finding joy in the company of your friends, finding joy in going to school, finding joy in a nature walk, finding joy in the music you listen to etc. These are small and relatively insignificant things that we typically take for granted, and yet they are the things that truly make life worth living.
All this of course comes down to paying attention and noticing the impact that simple pleasures have on your experience of life. The air you breathe, the things you touch, the aroma that passes through your nostrils, the tastes that roll over your tongue, the words you hear other people speak, these are all simple things that we take for granted. But, in fact, in some ways they are all miracles of life, of living.
Given this, one thing is very clear: To live with gratitude means to live life as though everything is a miracle. That is essentially what true gratitude is all about. It’s about treating everything – whether you initially perceive it as being good or bad – as a miracle.
When you spend your days seeing miracles manifesting all around you, you naturally start feeling grateful and appreciative for everything that life brings your way. However, even though this sounds quite straightforward, this is certainly not a lens you can just suddenly switch on and start using at a moment’s notice. In order to begin seeing the world in this way you will essentially need to make a shift in how you interpret your life, events and circumstances. And this of course will take time and effort on your part. It won’t be easy, but it is bound to be of incredible value.