3 Ways to Practice Gratitude

Monday’s EED quoted from an nbcnews.com article on reasons to practice gratitude even if you don’t feel like it. From that same article, here are three practical ways to bring more thankfulness into your lives – and not just on Thanksgiving:

“So now that we know being grateful is good for us…how can we learn to ‘practice’ gratitude if we’re just not in the mood?

1. Consider your words

…Paying attention to the words you use — even with yourself — is the simplest, yet most profound way to get in the grateful mindset…Grateful people use words like gifts, givers, blessings, blessed, fortune, fortunate, and abundance…Less grateful people are preoccupied with burdens, curses, deprivations, entitlements and complaints, and their words reflect this negative focus…

2. Start a gratitude journal

When you start to feel consumed with thoughts about what you don’t have or what isn’t going right, write down three things you do have, or that are going right — even in the Notes app on your phone. Seeing these things written down might help you to recognize them as tangible pluses in your life.

3. Just give thanks

‘Thank you’ are two incredibly powerful words that can go an awfully long way. Take a second to acknowledge what the people you love bring to your Thanksgiving table, both literally and metaphorically. Let them know how grateful you are for them. You might make someone’s day.”

Source: “How to be grateful even when you don’t feel like it,” by Vivian Manning-Schaffel, nbcnews.com, November 22, 2017

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