Gratitude is all about thankfulness, counting your blessings, noticing the simple things in life that bring you so much joy and taking the time to acknowledge all those things in your life that you take for granted. It means living your life as if even the smallest of things are huge. It means being continually aware of how much you have been given in this life.
During the past six months God has really been speaking to me about having a grateful heart, about living a grateful life. I'll be honest, I am not always quick to respond to God's requests but after a month of having the same message show up several times I finally took action and started to find things in my life to be grateful for every single day.
I bought myself a pocket size journal and began to document those things during that day which I could be grateful for. At first I found that I was having to grasp at things like "I'm grateful for a house to live in" or "Thank you that I have food to eat" and I soon realised that being grateful is actually a skill. It's something that I was really having to learn, to put effort into. It was so much easier to focus on all things that I didn't have or situations that hadn't gone the way that I had hoped for that day, but I knew I didn't want to be the type of person who lived a small and ungrateful life.
While I continued on my journey of gratitude, after a few weeks I found that something strange had started to happen inside of me. I started to see things in my life that I needed to be thankful for, even though situations hadn't changed. The entries in my journal started to look more like " Thank you Lord that I have a job that pays my bills and keeps me close to home, even if the people at work are difficult to work with and I feel constantly overwhelmed."
During this process I have realised that this has become a way of life for me. I look forward to climbing into bed each night, ready to thank God for the day that I had. I've also found that by living a grateful life it has shifted my focus from what my life lacks to the abundance that I already have in my life at this very moment. I feel happier even though nothing major has changed. Being a psychology student, I am interested in how simple decisions can change a persons quality of life and so I have read a few articles on this subject and found that as well as my experience of feeling happier in myself, research has also found that continuously being grateful improves health, reduces stress and can even strengthen relationships.
So I want to challenge everyone reading this - consider keeping a gratitude journal. It can be for as long or as short a period of time that you choose and you can do it in whatever way is easiest and most convenient for you. Perhaps on your phone or on Facebook - whatever works best.
What I know, above all else, is that I want to challenge myself to live a grateful life!
