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Be thankful: Gratitude is one of the most light, beautiful emotions that can help create a balance in our busy lives. It can help us pause time and find a balance between the most stressful moments. This article is a discussion on the meaning of gratitude and thankfulness. We will discuss 3 ways to be thankful and express true gratitude to our opportunities and challenges. We will end this article with a few quotes on gratitude that can motivate us to take some into practice.

One important point to remember is that gratitude means nothing if you don’t truly mean it. I’d only suggest to treat this with a pinch of salt – ultimately, your life is going to be about what you truly feel.

Meaning of gratitude and being thankful

What does it mean to be thankful?: Gratitude is derived from the Latin word grate meaning grace, gratefulness. It is an appreciation for what we have, whether it is opportunities or challenges. Gratitude helps us to acknowledge and recognise the good things in our life. Thankfulness is an expression of gratitude towards something – tangible or intangible.

Being thankful isn’t always easy. It demands that we maintain a holistic view of our life, this gets particularly hard when we are facing difficulties in life. But this emotion can make facing these difficulties a lot easier. Difficulties demand work – but thankfulness helps us identify what opportunities we have to enable facing these challenges in life.

Thankful people appreciate what they have instead of fixating on what they don’t.

Why should I be thankful?: Gratitude helps us to feel more positive emotions and create a sense of happiness. It helps us to look at challenges in life differently and maybe even generate an objective view. This is not about denying your difficulties.

“Happy People Focus On What They Have,Unhappy People Focus On What Is Missing”

Being thankful is about finding a balance between what you have. It doesn’t mean that you turn a blind eye towards your problems. Problems are a sign of life and it is very important to work towards solving them. But being thankful helps you gain a better perspective about these problems. It prevents you from having a siloed vision of problems in life and create a balance.

3 Ways to be thankful

There are plenty of ways to be thankful in life. I’d like to distinctly break this down into three segments. These segments can help us consciously practice thankfulness and gratitude:

1. Thankfulness for the moment
2. Developing a thankful mindset of gratitude
3. Being thankful for your body and physical being

It can be broken down into further segments, but you get the gist of what we’re trying to achieve here. The best way to make a habit stick is to make it easy and simple enough to remember and practice.

Gratitude for the moment

This is purely about taking a moment to be thankful and recognise ourselves. In other words, this thankfulness is about being mindful and aware of our life, circumstances, environment and appreciating this very moment. This moment can be about the air you breathe, music around you or even the challenges that make you grow. Note that mindfulness is not about negligence or judgement. It is merely a way of observing what’s happening and acknowledging it.

Again, thankfulness can spread out in two dimensions – about all the things that make you happy. We can also be thankful for the things that challenge and push us forward. Ultimately, nothing is more powerful than the reality. And sometimes this reality isn’t the way we like it. But that doesn’t necessarily make it bad.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness

Creating thankfulness habit

Thankfulness is not a one off behaviour but a mindset that we can train. The simplest way to train this behaviour of gratitude is by maintaining a journal of thankfulness. Remember, the agenda is not to just write but to notice all the things that we can be thankful about. It is a log of all those emotions that make you smile or feel something.

The painful emotions have a way of overtaking our memory. We tend to feel these painful emotions more intensely making us forget the happy ones on a daily basis. A journal will ensure that you notice these thankful emotions regularly and able to identify your day to day in balance. It’s unlikely for a day to be just about the negative emotions although it may feel like that at times.

Reflect, take a step back and look at yourself as a whole. Buddy up with someone who can lift your spirits

Gratitude to your body

The last point I’d like to mention about thankfulness and gratitude is for your body. You are a composition of both emotions and physical presence. The mind influences your body and vice versa. The best way to create a supportive environment for a healthy mind is to treat your body with adequate respect.

You are a certain way because of the composition of your mind and body. A major part of being thankful also involves treating your body well. You can do this by following some basic steps such as:

• Having a balanced diet – maintaining levels of acids and base in your body composition
• Drinking loads of water, feeling fresh and energetic
• Getting proper amount of sleep, a healthy body needs 8Hrs, You won’t achieve anything by pushing your body to the limits and stressing it out
• Manage good exercise balance

Quotes about Gratitude and Thankfulness

These are my top 10 be thankful quotes. I’m sure you can find more thankfulness quotes – but the common messages are about gratitude, observing our opportunities and being aware. I’d however like to impress the point that thankfulness for the sake of it will not get us anywhere. Unless we feel this wholeheartedly, the fake emotions will come back to haunt us. If you don’t feel thankful, it is better to work on and identify real things rather than make this a namesake exercise.

Thankfulness Quotes

1. Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough – Oprah Winfrey
2. I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.- Eckhart Tolle
3. Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses – Alphonse Karr
4. Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! – Elfi Shafak
5. If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get – Frank A. Clark
6. For me, every hour is grace. And I feel gratitude in my heart each time I can meet someone and look at his or her smile – Ellie Wiesel
7. People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don’t deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things – Cormac McCarthy
8. Reflect upon your present blessings – of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some – Charles Dickens
9. Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life – Robert Louis Stevenson
10. It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack – Germany Kent