In a fast-paced world that champions constant, tangible progress, it’s easy to get lost in the grind of everyday life. It’s also hard to focus on the good when much of the media that surrounds us seems intent on pointing out everything that’s bad or wrong—silencing the clutter and chaos of life can seem like an impossibly insurmountable task. 

Remembering to feel thankful for what you have and where you’ve been when you aren’t where you want to be yet is a challenge, though a necessary one to persevere through to achieve peace, happiness and even success. 

What if I told you that the key to happiness, to feeling lighter and more appreciative, lies within yourself? It just requires a few simple mindset shifts and practicing a gratitude ritual. 

The brain is a fantastically malleable organ; our neuroplasticity a muscle that can be strengthened through structured practice. Practicing gratitude can uplift your mental and physical wellbeing to improve your overall quality of life. 

Reframing gratitude as a ritual in your life, something that connects you to your inner sense of peace and stability or spirituality will help you create space for powerfully transforming your life as you learn to appreciate the abundance of wonderful things you already have in your world. 

I’d like to squash a quick misnomer about practicing gratitude—it doesn’t mean that you weren’t thankful before, rather that you’re being intentional about gratitude and recognizing the little pieces of your bigger picture. 

What Will A Grateful Mindset Do?

Both psychology and neuroscience have explored gratitude as affecting the brain in positive manners. According to the mental health app Calm, gratitude holds 13 key benefits for health and wellbeing in your life when put into consistent practice or ritualized: 

• Encourages positive thinking, which begins to rewire neural pathways 
• Improves overall mood by restructuring the neural pathways to attune to positive thinking patterns, helping you recognize all the good things in your life 
• Helps regulate stress by lowering cortisol release, the stress hormone 
• Enhances resilience and adaptability during life’s challenges 
• Improves self-esteem through regular practice
• Improves concentration and clarity by reducing mental clutter and worry 
• Promotes heart health because of reduced stress and inflammation, low blood pressure and reduced the risk of heart disease
• Better quality of sleep due to reduced anxiety and racing thoughts—you’ll be falling asleep faster, have improved duration of sleep, and better overall quality of sleep.
• Stronger immune system because of positive thinking and lowered stress. Higher cortisol levels can weaken the body’s immune system over time! 
• Lower perception of pain is often associated with pivoting your focus toward positive emotions and aspects of your life! This can be especially helpful for those who suffer from struggling to manage chronic pain.
• Enhanced empathy and reduced aggression toward others, even during times of criticism. Improved conflict resolution and creating more amicable relationships with others are both outcomes of this! 
• More effective communication can be built by expressing gratitude toward and appreciating others for all they do. Your relationships can be strengthened because of your gratitude mindset. 
• Higher sense of social connection can be felt when you spend time practicing gratitude. It leads to less isolation and improves our sense of community or belonging (positives often associated with the expression of gratitude)  

Identify Opportunities for Growth

Even with thorough planning, life won’t always go the way you expect. There’s a level of uncertainty about situational outcomes that can wiggle its way into your mind, causing doubt or stress or worry, and it’s okay to acknowledge these thoughts. Pain, hurt and disappointment are just as much a part of life as gratitude. You just have to know how to best approach them so that you don’t feel constantly drained or stuck. 

Gratitude isn’t necessarily always a tangible expression, though there are ways it can be practiced as such, like gifting. I like to consider gratitude as both a mental/emotional and physical practice—something you express outwardly and inward. It isn’t a means of forcing happiness either, but a way to train your mind to notice opportunities, connections or miracles you might not have noticed before. It can prevent you from spiraling into patterns of negative thinking and worry, and keep your focus on what you gain from life’s lessons instead. 

It’s easy to fall into a victim consciousness and feel that challenges are happening to you rather than for you, but in each painful or hard experience, there’s a wonderful opportunity for growth. This isn’t to say that you should dismiss your pain; instead, acknowledge it, and find grace in micro-gratitude. Maybe it’s a hot cup of tea or a new candle burning, the way the sunlight falls into the room, kind words from a friend or even simply that you’re awake and breathing. 

Appreciating the little things is a great first step in shifting yourself toward a gratitude mindset. By instituting micro-gratitude, you’ll begin to disrupt the neural pathways that default to negative thinking because negative circumstances arose. And remember, a baby step is still a step! 

Reframe Yourself Toward Gratitude

A good way to think about challenges is to regard them as personalized growth experiences that will assist you in understanding your capability to be present and curious, as well as your capacity to endure with love, understanding and wisdom. 

During times of crisis, challenges or circumstances that trigger negative reactions within yourself, it’s important to reframe the “what-if” questions you might ask yourself. You might feel physical triggers, such as a tense body, a racing heart, or defensive thoughts. Instead of dwelling and allowing anxiety to rule your actions, ask yourself what the root of the trigger is to help you understand why you might feel this way, and what you can take away from this type of reaction moving forward. 

Reframe your thoughts to think about possibility and room for growth where you might typically feel impossibility, by asking yourself:

• What is this experience teaching me?
• How am I becoming stronger through this challenge?
• What opportunities might be hidden in this moment?

Your pain can be transformed into purpose through the discomfort of learning how to choose gratitude, self-love and acceptance. You are bigger than the temporary circumstances that trigger negativity or worry, and more resilient than you realize. 

When your patience is tested, when your doubts and fears accumulate into a snowball of worry, that’s when your gratitude mindset will come in handy to guide you forward. Even when you can’t make sense of the bigger picture, remember the things you can control—reframing your thoughts toward a growth-mindset, practice micro-gratitude, and your resilience will carry you through. 

Ways to Practice Gratitude 

Like anything else, practicing gratitude requires discipline and flexibility. It’s okay to have a bad day, as long as you can still remember that it isn’t a bad life. The more you practice, the more you’ll be able to open yourself up to possibility, potential and the pure magic that exists in everyday life.  

Mindfulness, journaling, and other forms of expressing gratitude to yourself and others are great ways to begin. 

• Gratitude & Mindfulness
• Meditation, yoga and guided mindfulness will help to anchor you in positive moments and connect to the present with yourself and others. 
• Creating a daily ritual of gratitude is a great way to shift yourself into a gratitude mindset. Remember those 13 health and wellness benefits from earlier? You’ll be able to feel the shift in your energy, in your physical body and mental outlook by beginning or ending your day by focusing on blessings big or small to create a sense of thankfulness. 
• Gratitude Journaling 
• There are an abundance of gratitude journals with daily prompts and weekly check-ins that offer a more guided gratitude experience with both broad and specific questions, or if you’d like to express written gratitude more freely, you can always buy a blank journal to pinpoint what you feel thankful for. 
• Another form of journaling could be to create small gratitude notes throughout the day, in the notes app of your phone or in a journal! If you use your phone, you can also set gratitude reminders for yourself. 

Expressing small acts of kindness toward others, whether it’s your business team, friends, family or strangers, can help open up your mind to recognizing the good in your life. Some starter examples for everyday acts of kindness could be to leave a kind note for someone, complimenting a work colleague, checking in on a friend, or paying for someone’s coffee. 

You can even practice small acts of kindness with yourself, like spending time cooking and eating your favorite meal, watching your favorite movie, taking yourself for a walk to get some sun, or allowing yourself to have a slow morning on the weekend. 

Overall, it’s important to remember that your gratitude journey is yours. Whether it leans more free-spirited or feels more guided, you’ll gradually notice yourself inclined toward appreciation and thankfulness. That half empty cup feeling will soon fade as you realize that this whole time your cup was overflowing—you’re just shifting your focus away from everything that flows or pours out, and keeping it on what’s still there.