It's a practice
Gratitude encourages us to joy, tranquillity, awareness, enthusiasm, and empathy, while removing us from anxiety, sadness, loneliness, regret, and envy, with which it is fundamentally incompatible.
-Neel Burton M.D.
Like all virtues, gratitude must be cultivated. Here are 5 ways to cultivate gratitude in your life:
Take time to think about your ‘thank yous’ before saying them. Saying ‘thank you’ is a good habit but an empty one can erode our sense of gratitude.
Say grace before receiving your food, in public or on your own. Making a habit of this is a good way to bring in gratitude to your daily life.
Meditate and spend time in the corridors or stillness merely devoting time to connect to a source greater than you.
Think back to a more challenging time and the things you have overcome. Remembering a difficult period of our lives that we overcame allows us to be thankful for where we are right now.
Commit either your time, talents or resources to helping those with less than you. This gives perspective and allows you to see how much you have been blessed with.
Gratitude connects us to each other and the world around us. The more we live in gratitude, the more we will seek out moments to connect, to love and to share. We will be conscious of steps that need to be taken to rebuild our society and we will take them because we would understand the value of our oneness. Like Aesop said, gratitude is the sign of noble souls.