By Tori 
I’m sure we have all heard the phrase ‘count your blessings’ but how many times do we actually count our blessings? To me, it does not mean sitting down and literally counting them; it means constantly being grateful for all we have. Being genuinely grateful will change your perspective on how you live your life so much. Here are a few lessons I have learned about gratefulness:
- You never know what you have until you lose it. This hits home when you actually lose something or someone you took for granted. Once you sit down and reflect and come up with a list of things and people that you can’t live without that you currently have then you will realize how much is going well for you. I get it, our routines and lives are fast-paced; waking up, going to work or school, meeting people… it all becomes a monotonous routine that we now somehow expect. If that ‘routine’ happens to be distracted even by the smallest thing, that is when our eyes are opened and we realize all we took for granted. It’s like that meme that says ‘Having a blocked nose thinking about the times I could breathe normally’.
- Comparison and jealousy block gratitude. Those two are like parasites that eat into our ability to see what is right in front of us. If we always think that someone has what we want or is living a ‘good’ life, we will never be able to see into our own lives and appreciate that because our eyes are focused on what someone else has. This may be hard for some people because honestly, it’s easy to sit back and feel bad because of something you don’t have. There are always going to be people who have better things than us have what we badly want or have the things that we don’t have so the urge to compare ourselves with someone will always be there. However, I think that the best way to overcome this comparison is to be so thankful and appreciative of the things in our lives that when the comparison urge comes up, everything in our hearts is already settled and we’re ok.
- Life becomes better. Trust me, it does. When you have tuned your mind to always being grateful for whatever situation, even bad things don’t seem that bad anymore. You hurt a little but then you’re grateful for that situation because of some reason like: something good may arise from it; for example, a lesson or even an opportunity to reach out to someone. However, you don’t have to always think of the worst-case scenario for you to be grateful for your current situation. Most of us tend to do this. The main point is to just have a grateful mindset. It will make it easier to recognize small wins and appreciate things we consider normal.
- It all starts in the mind. Just like everything else, it’s all about the mindset and something wonderful about our minds is that they can be trained. You can train your mind to be thankful in every situation. Allow yourself to take on the situations as they come and not be too rigid when it comes to our expectations. A good tip is to regularly do meditation and reflection. Take some time during your day just to think about your life to just get everything in order in your mind. To get that clarity for each situation and appreciate it as it is. It’s like when you know you did something wrong and then later in the day, you realize that you shouldn’t have done that. That’s the clarity that comes with time and some reflection. So if you deliberately reflect on being grateful then being thankful will be easier.
Finally, living a life full of gratitude is the best thing you can do for yourself. Everything is more meaningful and you will appreciate each situation as it is. Just imagine the peace that comes with living a life like this. Luckily, we all have a chance to experience this by just taking the time to train our minds to always think grateful. Always have gratitude.
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-Tori
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