Don’t forget to be grateful with life
In one of my last posts we talked about forgiveness, today I would like to share my thoughts on gratefulness.
Why to be grateful?
Being grateful can bring us a lot of benefit to not only our lives but also the lives of the ones close to us, like friends or family, because by having this feeling we tend to feel more positive about life, therefore it becomes easier for us to share our positivity to other people.
Many times we might think that the people that surround us, must be there with us just like that, we forget that it is really a privilege to be able to share quality moments with other people, to develop relationships and friendship, one of the biggest joys in life is to have a deep connection with another human being, and when we achieve this, we should be grateful
We might forget to thank our friends, our family, our coworkers and even our neighbors (if they are good) for being there, for sharing moments and simply for sharing life with us. If we truly feel grateful it is possible for these small gestures to become a permanent thing in our daily lives, having then a positive impact on the life of our social circle.
Simple things like showing a smile when speaking with a stranger, saying "thank you" when receiving help, sending a message to our cousin we haven’t spoke for about 6 months, these things don’t require any effort from us, yet they make the other person feel better.
We might forget to appreciate being able to enjoy little things like a perfectly blue sky, the sand in our feet, the smell of the sea, the jokes with a coworker, a good tv show from time to time, an unexpected notification from an old friend, or simply a random person helping us out on the street... you know what I mean. Little things that make us smile on the inside.
If we show our gratefulness this proves the other person that their actions have an impact and that in some way they have helped us with what they have done or said. Remember that in which someone has thanked you for something, how did you feel? Possibly ... grateful! Yes! one of the characteristics of gratitude is that it generates more gratitude! It seems that this attitude has no waste! Like a never ending chain of positivism being expanded your everyone!
Besides, being grateful gives us more benefits. The others will hold you in high regard, they will enjoy spending with you and will value any efforts you make for them. It makes you feel better person and valued by others by improving our communication and our relationships with others. Which contributes to raise your self-esteem and self-confidence, allowing you to keep,growing, maturing and be closer to your better self.
If throughout the day we think of all the little things or gestures that have made us enjoy that day a little bit more, we will surely notice there are many more of those than we realize. Our life is full of little joys in everyplace at every time, and it’s up to us to ignore them, or appreciate them. Must of us go through our day full speed because that’s how our society is right now, it’s fast paced and we need to be like that if we want to stay afloat.
How can we practice gratefulness on a daily basis?
Simply by paying attention to what surrounds you, what happens to you every day that makes you feel good, that gives you positive emotions. What I want to say is that by stopping for a few minutes, and enjoying the beauty of the things that surrounds we will feel recharged and ready to continue with our day, with more energy than before. Try to put your focus on everything good that that is near you and embrace the feeling of gratefulness.
Another thing is we need to realize no one can read minds so we should not assume that others know what we think and feel, so perhaps we might ve very grateful but if we don’t show it the other person will simply never know about it. So when we are sharing this feeling, the best way is to do it on a sincere and totally honest way, and the more we practice it the more automatic it will become for us to show our gratefulness, spreading positive energy to the people close to us who deserve it.
Another thing we need to take into account, is that even if we start to show more of our gratefulness, other people won’t be necessary like this with you, but this is totally normal and we shouldn’t be frustrated by it. Everyone of us is free to think, decide, speak and act as their wish, so sharing our gratefulness without expecting it anything in return is probably better. Sometimes we just need to act towards giving and not necessarily receiving, and this is probably one of those cases.
Conclusion
Being grateful is good for us, for our enjoyment of our everyday live, and it can also have a positive impact in the life of the people that surrounds us. By being grateful we can improve the mood of other people simply by giving them little gestures of gratitude.
If people near us start to see our positivity, they can decide to also adopt a more positive mindset and therefore creating a chain of positive interactions between individuals, increasing with time and adding more and more people wanting to share their good feelings with everyone else.
Nevertheless, it’s important to not expect anything in return, and understand other people might not be willing to adopt this mindset immediately, so sharing our gratefulness without expecting any gesture towards us is probably the wiser way to approach this.
What about you? Are you grateful with life? Do you share your gratefulnes with the people around you?
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I think the same.
Absolutely agree to your point. We tend to overlook things that gives us little happiness. I think we should be grateful for everything. We are alive and breathing what else you want in life right? :)
Yes we should. Especially for living in this era of abundance!
Keep calm and be grateful!
You got this mate!
Being grateful for what you have in life is so important for well-being and happiness. Even though I look to grow, my setbacks do not get me down because I am grateful for how far I have already come.
I guess it means I am not afraid to fail as I am content already. Great post man!
I am glad you agree with me! About the setbacks, well... life is about that too, making mistakes and learning from them. Besides, mistakes are the things that makes us stronger and wiser with time.
Thanks for the feedback pal!
It’s funny how much perception of others influences how they act towards you. I have a friend who is extremely cynical and it’s amazing to see the difference between the way people treat him and the way people treat me. I’ll get free drinks and he’ll get kicked out of the bar. I’m not really a normal guy who plays by the rules and says what everyone wants to hear either. But I have a general attitude of “let me find the good in you” whereas he has an attitude of “wtf is wrong with you?”
Being grateful can put you in a position to make the most of the situation too. I was upset about some changes made to steemit about 5 months ago, and I forgot my appreciation for all of the support people had given me and actually lost a lot of it. Live and learn!
Now I focus on what I can appreciate first. If I have time and energy, I focus on what’s wrong, but only in order to fix it.
What you say about your friend is completely logical bro. Look at it this way:
Who would you prefer to spend some time with and hang out? A person who focuses on the negative or a person who focuses on the positive?
And it’s not just about how others can treat us, is also about how we feel about ourselves and about our lives. We all know people that have spectacular lives and are always treated like royalty, yet for some reason they aren’t happy with life and are victims of horrible depressions.
So even though being grateful does indeed makes other people like us, the most important is the effect it has in ourselves and our long term wellbeing.