You cannot go wrong by being grateful

One of the things I've learned in the last few years is to express gratitude more. Even on a most unproductive, lazy day you can find things to feel gratitude towards to. The best thing about gratitude is that you can be grateful for just about anything. 


When you try it for a while, you'll realize that gratitude will increase the overall feeling of happiness. Once you appreciate the little - and big - things you are or that you have, you'll start to feel more satisfied with your life. Gratitude will help you stay in the present moment, and let's face it, the present moment is all that you will ever have, so you might as well concentrate and enjoy it! Gratitude doesn't stop on yourself, because once you consciously teach yourself to be grateful, you'll find it only natural to help others find more things to be grateful for, too. 


Three precious things I'll always be the most grateful for.

I thought it was going to be hard to write a list of 100 things to be grateful for, but it really wasn't once I got the hang of it. I asked my husband to do a practice with me of listing the things he was grateful for. After "Kids, you, health, home, work" he stopped for a second. After I told him an example "You can be thankful for your senses, but you can also be thankful for your glasses for making your every day life easy. Imagine if you didn't have glasses, but you did have a prescription." After this there was no stopping him. So here's only a fraction of the list that we created together. It's hanging in our kitchen wall and I have started to read it out loud once a day while seriously concentrating on the feeling of gratitude towards the particular thing I'm pronouncing.


I know sometimes situations make it very difficult to find the silver lining and I'm not saying anyone should force themselves happy, but gratitude can help you deal with the difficult things as well. My youngest son is very stubborn at times and sometimes it complicates simple things unnecessarily. I'm still grateful for his stubbornness every time when I think that it means he won't give up easy and such perseverance will only serve him in his life. In other words despite the momentarily struggle when he's a toddler, I'm grateful for his stubbornness. 




The best thing is that once you start thinking about the things you're grateful for, you'll only find more to be grateful for. For example today I'm grateful for my cooking skills. 10 years ago I could cook about five dishes and bake only one type of a cake. Today I used a leftover Christmas dish that I had prepared for a Christmas party for last weekend that we were unable to attend after all. I made potato cakes and those tasted exactly like the ones my grandma used to make when I was a kid. I'm thankful for having learned to cook, read recipes and improvise in the kitchen. I am looking forward to what will be the signature dishes that my children will want to learn to make once they grow up, because they remind them of their childhood. That is definitely something to be grateful for.



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