How to learn to be grateful in life and why it's important!

In this post, I share how to learn to be grateful in life and why it’s important! Feeling and expressing gratitude is one of the most important aspects of living a happy and successful life!

Importance of gratitude and how to be grateful in life

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My blog that you are reading is named after gratitude—bellflower symbolizes gratitude.

When I started this blog, gratitude was one thing I deeply wanted to implement in my life. It was a very rough phase of my life.

I had become very negative, and somewhere deep down, I knew that I needed to focus on being more grateful. This blog was a gentle reminder of that!

But it did take me almost a year to truly, deeply, and wholly feel gratitude in my life.

When we are happy, it’s easy to feel thankful as things are happening in your favor, but when things are falling apart,

it gets difficult to stay optimistic and still value the good things we have. But at the same time, it is in these moments that we need gratitude more than ever.

I realized it during those 1-2 years.

In this post, I will share the importance of gratitude and how to be grateful in life!

But first, Pin it for later!

Table of Contents

Why is gratitude important?

Gratitude, as we know, means being thankful for something good you received in life. The fact that you are alive in itself is something to feel grateful for, and just like that, each one of us has SO MANY things to be grateful for.

BUT

The sad truth is that we take those things for granted. Our mind, and the way society works, makes us always try to chase after more and more until what we have now becomes meaningless.

Let’s start by talking about the powerful mind. The purpose of our brain or mind is to look for threats in our life to survive.

When we were hunters, our mind had a very major role in this—we didn’t have food or shelter, and we were easy prey to animals too.

In this situation, our mind’s function of looking for threats to keep us surviving was needed and useful.

But now, times have changed. We are not facing life threats every day or every second.

We live in a sheltered home,
Have food on the table,
Are protected from wild animals,
Have so many other facilities and comforts in life,
Have access to healthcare and support.

That means we are surviving pretty well, but our mind does not know that. No matter how our lifestyle changes, the function of our mind stays the same—to protect us and look for threats in our daily life. And it’s not a bad thing because we still do need some sort of protection, and our brain is not wrong to do so.

However, we let the threats and negative thoughts our mind brings into situations or phases in our life that are completely fine. We start living in fear-based survival mode.

We are living in fight or flight and not THRIVING as per our headspace.

But in reality, it is not true. You have so much security and abundance in your life!

We also need to understand that our mind is separate from us. Every thought that comes from our mind is not US and not REALITY.

So it is our duty to actively work with our mind and be like, “Hey, chill. We are doing good! There is nothing to worry about! We are safe and living in so much comfort.”

We need to assure our mind, and we can do this by actively making the choice to be grateful—aka look for good things in your life.

2nd REASON

Another reason that gratitude is so important is because it is very much linked to happiness and a healthy mental state, as explained above.

A person who is not grateful is a complainer and negative thinker. No matter how much good comes to that person, his/her mind is always looking for lack and danger, creating a very unhappy life full of problems that they only created in their head.

And the truth is that we only realize the blessing and gratitude towards something once it’s gone—if we didn’t value it when we had it.

MANIFESTATION

Neuroscience shares that what we think becomes our reality. The more we think and feel gratitude for what we already have, the universe gives more of that—abundance and things to be grateful for.

I will link down a study that explains how our mind creates our reality and how the kind of thoughts we have shapes everything.

How gratitude changed my life

I was not always someone who expressed gratitude. In fact, I used to be a big complainer and victimizer of my life.

I was always looking for things I didn’t have and comparing my life to others, feeling so ungrateful.

And so, my life was exactly like that. I kept attracting experiences in my life that were miserable too, and my mind’s main focus of attention was to always look for the negative and lack in everything.

I was pretty depressed the whole year where I spent almost every day complaining, and I remember that as I was complaining to my sister (like always), she got fed up and told me how ungrateful I was and how I was always complaining.

The thing is, even though I was like that, I never really realized this was how I was living. But for some reason, when she said it, I realized—since then, how ungrateful I had been about everything.

I eventually made the conscious choice to change these habits and start writing gratitude pages every day.

If not finding, then creating tiny things in my day to feel positive about, and everything changed since then.

When everything in your life seems like it’s crumbling and there is nothing you can do, the only ray of sunshine you need to look at is gratitude because there is always something to be grateful for—even ONE THING is enough.

But I can assure you that you have more than one thing always that you are simply blessed with!

To summarize, why gratitude is important:

It helps us improve our mental health.
It helps us start looking for abundance instead of lack in our life.
It shifts our perspective.
It makes us happier.
It attracts more abundance.
It helps us live a healthy and happy life.
It strengthens relationships.

Now I hope these are enough reasons to understand the importance of gratitude! Let’s learn how we can be more grateful!

How to learn to be grateful in life

1. Make a gratitude list everyday

One of the things I started with to practice more gratitude is to write or speak 3 things I am grateful for every day.

By doing this, I was giving my mind an order to look for a different answer as opposed to what it already looks for.

You can write anything honestly, even something as small as a cup of coffee or tea, and I can assure you that you will find this in my gratitude pretty much every time.

Being grateful does not have anything to do with getting BIG LUXURIOUS things in life only. It can be found in the most simple daily pleasures in life.

The key here is to look for things you feel truly grateful about and write them every day.I have made a post sharing A-Z ideas to be grateful for in your life

CLICK HERE TO READ- A to z gratitude list: 500 things to be grateful for in 2024

2. Remind yourself of abundant things in your life when struggling

Through our daily life, as we are working toward various things and trying to grow, we can be faced with challenges or things that are not going according to our plan.

When things happen, we are often hit by these waves of extreme emotions, feeling like everything is falling apart or that life is so hard.

These feelings can make us complain and get trapped in a cycle of negative thinking, where we start devaluing our life and often forget about the good things that have happened in the past or are still happening in other aspects. When this happens and you find yourself thinking negatively, complaining, or feeling low about your life, make a conscious choice to remind yourself of the abundant things in your life.

Even the littlest bit of good things that happened recently—give yourself evidence that, in the past, you have received things you once wanted, and even blessings you never asked for.

There is always something. Don’t say, “I don’t have anything,” because it’s not true. You need to look for it and change your perspective.

3. Start and end your day with gratitude

Similar to the first point, as I mentioned in it, as soon as you wake up, in your mind or out loud, say at least 1-2 things you are grateful for. And as you end your day, right when you close your eyes, take a deep breath and say 1-2 things you feel grateful for from either today or from the past.

I also say gratitude towards things I want to manifest. So out of 3 things I say, one would be something I am working on manifesting in my life, so I become already in the state of receiving it!

4. Start saying “thank you” more often

Adding a habit of saying “thank you” or “I am so grateful for this” to other people or situations throughout your day can also help you stay in the state of gratitude more.

For example: To your family and friends for meeting you and making you feel better, you can simply tell them, “I am so grateful that you spent the day with me or brought me this food.”

The driver who drops you off to your location, the waiter who gives you your food—there are so many tiny situations where we can express our gratitude.

5. Practice gratitude meditations

There are many guided meditations on YouTube that you can practice to feel more gratitude in life.

These meditations help you get out of the state of anxiousness and feel more calm and content by allowing yourself to feel good about yourself and your life.

6. Get a gratitude journal

If you are the type of person who uses planners or journals every day, then getting a guided gratitude journal can help you practice it daily without slipping out of the habit!

7. Be mindful

At the end of the day, being grateful is a mindful decision that you have to constantly be aware of and remind yourself.

Gratitude can be expressed for anything—from the food you eat every day, to people you meet, to the simple things you buy, and so on.

Understanding deeply why gratitude is important in life and the changes it brings, like how it changes your mood and helps you feel calm and happy again, is key.

It’s only gratitude that raises your vibration and helps you get more abundance in life. Not complaining, being a victim, or negative thinking—they won’t get you anywhere but stuck and miserable.

But feeling grateful and expressing it more will get you more things to be grateful for!

That’s all!

Have a good day

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How to learn to be grateful in life and why it’s important!