4 Easy Steps to Cultivate Mindful Gratitude

We  live in a society that gets paid to complain – to find what is wrong with other people and businesses like secret shoppers and negative reviews, TV news, newspapers, magazines…. Sometimes it’s like we are expecting things to go wrong.

And they do.

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” – Denis Waitley

There is a story about a researcher who puts a child into a room with horse manure all over the floor. The child just stood there and cried.

They put another child into the room and yet observed this child throwing the manure in the air and cheering joyfully. When the researcher asked the child why he seemed so excited he answered;

“With all this poop, there’s gotta be a pony around here somewhere.”

Everything is a choice.

Let me ask you – do you think the rain will ruin the party?

What are your choices?

If the party is your wedding day will you let it be a bad memory for the rest of your life or will you kick off your shoes and dance all night under the tent with the love of your life?

You can’t wait around for outside forces to bring you joy and gratitude, you must raise your gratitude index yourself.

Here are ways to cultivate gratitude and raise your happiness vibration to a new high.

1.) Decide: Be determined to create a new habit of looking on the bright side of life’s obstacles. It takes a daily routine to consciously develop a new habit. But you will notice that every time you practice this new habit, you will feel your excitement (serotonin hormones) rising on the spot.

2.) Restructure your complaints before it comes out of your mouth (hopefully).  For example, when I’m stuck in traffic I might stop my complaint before it leaves my mouth and restructure my comment by instead saying, “wow, there are a lot of people who want to get home to their loved ones just like me.”

 

“The quicker you are to attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes and the more deadened you become to reality.” -Eckhart Tolle

 

Just the effort of restructuring a positive statement feels like the positive result of lifting weights in the mind. It takes no effort to complain. But until the new habit is formed, it takes a conscious effort and desire to be positive and restructure your statements.

3.) Use your time wisely and experience an instant emotional boost by developing the habit of counting your gratitude’s. Waiting for a friend at a restaurant, or in the long line at the DMV? Start counting.

Here is the key to counting what you are grateful for. Use your fingers to count 10 things you are grateful for. One gratitude for every finger. The reason for using the fingers is that you are far less likely to do a “squirrel” distracted move and let your attention wander off.

4.) Abide by the Law of Attraction by addressing anything with questions about what is going right and move away from what is wrong and spend your time and energy on what is right.

The pay-offs are big for developing the habit of being grateful during your day. More joy, contentness.

Also, when life really throws you an opportunity for major discouragement, the habit will already be in place doing it’s thing to count your blessings naturally. Thus resulting in less downtime in negativity and you bounce back quicker.