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Change Your Mindset!
Ten Ways to Be More Thankful
and
Practice Gratitude In Your Life
Each and every moment is an opportunity to practice gratitude and be grateful. Often, we get busy and are riding the waves of life and we forget our conscious gratitude practices. It's important to set time aside daily to regroup with yourself and root your life in gratitude because gratitude is a game changer. Gratitude has positive effects. When you are living in gratitude, you show up grateful, with an abundant mindset, and you notice the little things more. Not everything has the same priority of meaning because you are more aware.
Here are ten ways to change your mindset, become more appreciative and practice gratitude in your day-to-day life, moments, and activities.
1. Create Space and Time to Create a Gratitude Practice
Add gratitude to your best life toolbox and create that space and time to practice and develop your gratitude practice. This will cultivate a mindset of gratitude.
Take time to appreciate your morning, afternoon, or nighttime moments to add in time for your gratitude practice. Many choose those morning moments to set the tone for the day. For many of us, we savor the day with each sip of our freshly brewed coffee or tea. For many others, the first few minutes after we wake up creates the perfect moments to begin your day with a positive outlook.
Build a Culture of Gratitude Within
Root in gratitude. Whatever the situation brings, Gratitude gives us perspective and helps us through those challenging situations with heightened awareness and perhaps better resilience. When you are struggling to be positive, it is important to find even the smallest or slightest hope, light, faith, positive outlook and more.
To create a culture of gratitude within start with this exercise:
Ask yourself: Is there something in my life that is creating stress or joy?
List one thing you are grateful for in this moment.
This small practice will begin the shift to create gratitude within, as your gratitude list will build that will enforce your ability to be grateful. There's nothing better than gratitude on autopilot. Conducting yourself from an approach of gratefulness and abundance is most surely better for you and everyone who is in contact with you.
Create a Consistent Practice
Practice is one thing. Consistency is another. To create the life of gratitude you seek, the actions must be consistent. We practice like we live it, so when you practice consistently, it sets the tone for your life and developing your world class excellent self.
Commit to yourself for 30 days. Set the exact time (morning, afternoon, evening) Create an appointment for yourself that isn't negotiable. Set the place and gratitude activity.
I personally love gratitude journals. Whether guided or blank, they are a wonderful space and place to write down your words of gratitude wisdom.
If you don't have a journal, you can use prompts and a notebook just as easy.
I like lists of three and they can be in any category or area of your life. For example:
Who are three people that I am grateful for?
What are three moments I am grateful for?
What are three things near me that I am grateful for?
You get the idea.... make lists of three. A few years ago, I wrote a Best Ever You guided journal with my friend Kris M. Fuller. It has guiding prompts for 52 weeks. I use it in my daily life. We also have Mia Mel Journals on amazon that are blank and some with list like prompts.
Journaling is a way to remind yourself what you are grateful for in your personal and professional life. When we write down and acknowledge the lessons we learned or the people we connected with, we are rewiring our brain for positive, gratitude so that it becomes a natural response.
2. Go All Grateful on It
It's easy to get caught up in life's dramas and negativity, however, I have a tool to turn those frowns upside down and create more positive energy and more happiness in your life. It's called The Gratitude Flip. To best use and practice the Gratitude Flip, when you think a negative thought, try to see the positive side in the situation and reframe it. Even if there appears to be little to no hope. Find something to be thankful for and focus on that. Reframe it. If you no longer want to have that negative commotion, drama or funky energy, change the landscape of your life with the Gratitude Flip.
3. Say Thank You
The two most underutilized words that should be overutilized are Thank You. Say thank you often and to people unexpectedly. There is nothing better than simply writing someone a handwritten note of appreciation. You could create a practice where you thank someone every few weeks or once a month you write thank you notes. Take the time to create a positive, lasting connection with a thank you note or phone call of gratitude.
Saying thank you acknowledges someone and sends a message of appreciation.
4. May Gratitude Guide You
In my latest book, The Change Guidebook, I talk about gratitude guiding you. May gratitude guide you is a powerful sentence from the book that reminds you to go about your life being grateful and allowing the magic of an abundant mindset to move you in new directions. Whether it is joy, peace, love, or gratitude guiding you (or all of them) remember to allow gratitude in and to share it with others. Those around you, including you, will benefit from your positive, gratitude energy.
5. Watch Your Words
What are you saying to yourself and others on a regular basis? It is loving? Anchor in your power and positive energy and use power words to get your brain trained for gratitude and abundance. Those with gratitude guiding them use words that are powerful in positive energy and abundance.
6. Clear the Air
Whether it is a walk or forgiveness needed, clear the air. Get the energy unblocked and flowing forward. Get some fresh air and get a fresh perspective. Often we need to process emotions and get unstuck. We may need to forgive. We may need to apply gratitude. This may mean actually talking a walk or find a quiet space to meditate to calm yourself and find your grounding or re-center your energy and yourself.
Go until your brain quiets down. If on your first walk or meditation, your brain doesn't quiet, continue to do the practice every day or every few days until your brain cooperates with your need to quiet down.
7. Post a Reminder
I absolutely love reminders. Memes are popular for a reason. They are small reminders of positive energy or gratitude. They anchor us in our power with their messaging. You can post notes to yourself in a gratitude jar or box, a mirror, your car, the refrigerator, on your desk, walls, laptop and other places.
Some gratitude reminders:
A note to yourself to remind you of a goal or kind words
A inspiring quote
A picture
A item
A thank you note someone has written you
Gratitude boxes and jars are both easy activities that can also be wonderful family time. You write down messages of gratitude and drop them in the jar or box. You can also gather messages from loved ones for a person and give this as a gratitude gift.
8. Do a Random Act of Kindness, Volunteer or Donate
Random acts of kindness create waves of peace. Find a situation, place or event and do something nice for some else. Volunteering or donating your time is also a so helpful to others. This is a good resource for opportunities to serve others: https://www.justserve.org/. When you volunteer your time to help others, we create change. There's much to be said for the power of us and this creates a different perspective on life and gratitude for you.
9. Pause for Peace
Turn off electronics, TVs, noise and outside influences, including phones. Create some moments to be quiet with yourself. You can even go all "old school" on it. Have board games, reading, cooking night, or even take a nap or catch up on much needed sleep. Be grateful for the quieter moments.
You could take this an extra step and do a few days or even a week with either less or none. It can be a challenge, but it can be done. Quiet days and nights create time to hear yourself and listen to yourself.
10. Create a Gratitude Network
Let someone know how grateful you are for them. Let them know how they helped you in life. You can post in social media, write a personal letter, call or text, send a gift or card and more. The important point is to say thank you and let the person know how much they mean to you. You can also share to others how much this person means to you. It's a wonderful way to network.
Remember, creating an intentional gratitude practice isn't always easy. Allow yourself time to discover what works well for you. However you choose to integrate gratitude in your life, you’re percolating kindness and positive energy into your life, those around you and the world as a whole.
About Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino
Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino is the founder of BestEverYou.com. Through these companies, she has helped individuals and organizations around the world be their best and achieve world-class excellence with gratitude-based behavior and belief systems. She is one of America's foremost personal and corporate development consultants specializing in mindset, gratitude, facilitating change, and taking action.
Elizabeth is a Master Life Coach and the bestselling author of 8 books including the award-winning book Percolate – Let Your Best Self Filter Through (Hay House/Penguin Random House, April 4, 2014) and The Change Guidebook – How to Align Your Heart, Truths, and Energy to Find Success in All Areas of Your Life (HCI/Simon & Schuster, 4/5/22).
Elizabeth is host of the long-standing popular podcast The Best Ever You Show. The show was created in 2010 from her home office, which has millions of downloads and listens with over 600 guests.
Elizabeth lives her daily life with multiple, life-threatening food allergies. Elizabeth and Sally Huss have co-authored three best-selling children's books: A Lesson For Every Child: Learning About Food Allergies, Self-Confident Sandy and Best Ever You.
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