Shared with kind permission from Greater Good magazine.
As we celebrate Thanksgiving, take a moment to learn from Robert Emmons as he offers us his everyday tips for living a life of gratitude.living gratefully begins with affirming the good and recognizing it's sources. It is the understanding that life owes me nothing and all the good I have is a gift.." Robert Emmons
Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits and good things you enjoy. Setting aside time on a daily basis to recall moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal attributes, or valued people in your life gives you the potential to interweave a sustainable life theme of gratefulness.
For more information on journaling...
To be grateful in your current state, it is helpful to remember the hard times that you once experienced. When you remember how difficult life used to be and how far you have come, you set up an explicit contrast in your mind, and this contrast is fertile ground for gratefulness.
Utilize the meditation technique known as Naikan, which involves reflecting on three questions:
1) “What have I received from __?”,
2) “What have I given to __?”, and
3) “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”
In many spiritual traditions, prayers of gratitude are considered to be the most powerful form of prayer, because through these prayers people recognize the ultimate source of all they are and all they will ever be.
You could also try meditation, sound bathing or 432HZ
Through our senses—the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear—we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a miraculous construction but also a gift.
Because the two primary obstacles to gratefulness are forgetfulness and a lack of mindful awareness, visual reminders can serve as cues to trigger thoughts of gratitude. Oftentimes, the best visual reminders are other people.
Research shows that making an oath to perform a behavior increases the likelihood that the action will be executed. Therefore, write your own gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count my blessings each day,” and post it somewhere where you will be reminded of it every day.
At Bawah our guests can write their "wishes" on a piece of bamboo and hang it on the jetty as a reminder!
Grateful people have a particular linguistic style that uses the language of gifts, givers, blessings, blessed, fortune, fortunate, and abundance. In gratitude, you should not focus on how inherently good you are, but rather on the inherently good things that others have done on your behalf.
If you go through grateful motions, the emotion of gratitude should be triggered. Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude.
If you want to make the most out of opportunities to flex your gratitude muscles, you must creatively look for new situations and circumstances in which to feel grateful.
Do it now and the feeling will come."
If you enjoyed this, then you might also like Robert's Little Book of Gratitude available in all good book stores.