The Benefits of Gratitude: How Practicing Gratitude Can Improve Your Mental Health and Relationships
Saying thank you to yourself is more than just an expression. When you do so, you set yourself up for the following things:
- positive outcome
- good attitude
- better relationships
- good perception
Those things are not magic. To answer the question of how it works, we must first reverse it. Ask yourself, if I will always be sad and dissatisfied, what will be my attention to other people?
Possible answers are the following:
- having bad thoughts
- feeling anger
- being jealous
- staying judgemental
With such thoughts and feelings, we can’t be happy and get pleasure from life. It’s not about some specific days or weeks. We are talking about the whole life.
If the person thinks that everything is terrible around her, then the possible outcome is always worse than it could be.
That’s why we are approaching the gratitude methodology. If you can say thank you at least once per day for anything, then the game is changed.
Your brain starts thinking of the following things:
- the life is not so bad
- I have amazing people around me
- my opportunities are great
- every day can be enjoyable
Our thoughts are the root of everything we have before any action comes an emotion. Every feeling originates from a thought. I have corrected the sentence to make it grammatically correct and precise.
Just one word in your head, one sentence you pronounce right now, may change the following years of your life. That’s why you should be very careful with your mind, the resources you consume, and the people you talk with.
Feeling better means thinking healthier and having a good mood in your mind. It’s not enough to smile all the time, say jokes, and be the most positive person in the room.
It would help if you achieved the rational dialog in your head. Work with all the negative you consume and produce. That’s all under your control. But sometimes, we are lazy about our thoughts.
All we need is to take control of them. It won’t be so easy. It may take some time, like weeks, months, or even more. But the result is the best. You will get it piece by piece every day.
About consistency, I’d like to recommend you one more piece written by. It’s the review of the book Atomic Habits written by James Clear. It’s fantastic stuff that I highly recommend you to read.
I hope you got the main idea from this article. Think carefully and control this process. Any time you see that your thoughts go in the wrong direction, do the following things:
- start breathing deeply
- concentrate on your feelings (touch, listen, smell)
- watch your thoughts like words in the song
- decide what you want to do with them
This article will help you take the process into your own hands and start working on your happiness. And remember, if you are happy, other people around you are also more comfortable. If you are sad, then other people feel sadness as well.
Four more articles I recommend you to read are below.
