How To Be More Grateful
In one of our recent articles, titled How to feel and express gratitude, we touched upon this topic for the first time here. If you read it, you now know the origins and benefits of being grateful.
In this article, we’ll tell you how you can learn to be more grateful. Here are our top tips:
Make ‘feeling grateful’ part of your morning routine
With the help of small rituals, you can learn gratitude. For instance, you can remind yourself of what you are grateful for every morning. This way, you’ll start out your day with positive thoughts. The more often you do it, the more this way of thinking solidifies. Consequently, positive thinking becomes easier and easier.
Gratitude journal
Writing a gratitude diary can also help you internalize a positive attitude towards life. For example, you can write about things you appreciate every evening before bed.
This is really about the small things, like getting a discount on your favorite chocolate or the phone call you had with your best friend.
Remembering the positive things of the day strengthens the feeling of gratitude. If you don’t want to write by hand, you can use numerous journaling apps.
Further possibilities
Books, including romances, can also help us feel gratitude. When reading about the (fictitious) lives of others, we can stop to notice similarities or differences to our own lives and feel appreciative for them.
Furthermore, we can also cultivate positive thoughts by gifting ourselves something we like, such as a bouquet of roses. You can also go for a long walk or just play your favorite song.
Finally, ou can also make a photo book with all the things you are grateful for.
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Appreciate things you used to take for granted
We often take many things for granted that we could be grateful for. For example, our hobbies, friends and pets.
In addition, we can consciously pay attention to the small gestures of other people in everyday life. Maybe the door was held open for us. Like the fact that the neighbor brought us our package from downstairs or that a stranger held the door open for you.
These interpersonal attentions are all worth a sincere “thank you”. So let’s always show our gratitude, either in words or with a smile. Because it feels good to feel appreciation coming both from the inside and from others.
