Hi! Just wanted to make sure that you know that many of the links I use are affiliate links. This means that, after I have fallen in love with a product, I ask if I can help to promote it. If you click on my link and purchase, I get a commission and a very grateful heart.
Being stuck is such a mind mess. Because the answers you need will come to you over and over yet you are so stuck in stuckness that you can’t see them. Or, if you do see them, your protective ego jumps in to tell you what a bad idea it all is. Or how silly or woo-woo or hopeless it is. The longer you have been stuck, the more comfortable your mind has become in stuckville.
I spent years hearing people talk about the importance of gratitude and to me it sounded like “blah blah blah.” Like, sure, I get it. It’s important to not be a jerkface and actually be appreciative of things and people around you. Yeah, ok. But I sure didn’t think that gratitude could change my life because, well, I was a special case of messed up and gratitude only worked for people who had hope. Not cases like me.
Here’s the funny thing. Over the years, I actually did give daily gratitude practices a go. And every single time, I saw a positive difference in my life and my mental health. But darn that ego. It got painfully uncomfortable with those unfamiliar good feelings and so filled me up with all kinds of excuses to not have time to continue.
I’m saying all of this so that maybe you can see the little tricks your ego is playing on you if you have also found reasons to not give a daily gratitde practice a go. Sometimes, I think it feels better to have complex answers to our problems. Or reasons that it is out of our control. That way we don’t have to try. We don’t have to get uncomfortable with new feelings. And, yes, feeling joy, happiness and gratitude can feel damn uncomfortable if your mind has become used to feeling frustration, anger, and resentment.
Did you know that starting your day with positivity is one of the best things you can do to improve your life? It has an immediate, powerful impact on your mind and your body. The benefits are numerous, and you start experiencing them from the first day you deliberately begin your day being positive and grateful.
These are the top five benefits you gain from a positive start to your day.
Better Mood
Starting your day with positivity increases your mood and helps you have a better day. Being positive brings you inner peace, lowers your stress levels, increases your optimism, and makes you feel good. All of these benefits combine to put you in a better mood.
Taking time out to inject gratitude into your day improves your mood at all times of the day but it is especially effective first thing in the morning. You’ll find that by FEELING gratitude first thing in the morning, you will, without even realizing it, scan your life throughout the day for things to be grateful for.
I’m a lifelong focuser on the negative. So it was not an automatic change for me to get my mind to stop scanning for things to criticize and be upset about, but it did happen much quicker than I would have thought. That change in focus is HUGE. HUGE!!!
Better Health
People who put their focus on things to be grateful for are healthier than their peers. This is partly due to the lower stress levels experienced by those who practice gratitude but there is more to it than that and scientists are still working to understand it. Positive people are healthier on every level and tend to live longer as well!
There is a connection between your heart and brain where they tell each other how to feel. When you are overwhelmed with negative feelings, you aren’t just thinking negative thoughts, but you are feeling it in your body. The more you feel it, the more the mind reacts and thinks more of the negaive thoughts which makes your body feel it more. So if it works that way with negative thoughts, how about seeing how it works with gratitude?
Starting your day with gratitude and positive thinking sets the tone for your entire day and will lead you to be more positive throughout everything in life.
More Success
Thinking and feeling gratitude first thing in the morning helps clear your mind and allows you to focus more on your tasks for the day. It centers your mind and body. This leads directly to having more success every day and over the long term. Grateful people, as a whole, are much more successful than others. This is true in every aspect of life, from careers to relationships. Like does attract like. When you are in a bad mood, more and more bad things pile onto your day. When you are in a grateful state of mind, more and more things to be grateful for come your way.
Happiness
Not only does starting your day with gratitude (thinking and feeling it) increase your mood, but it makes you happier. It boosts all of the “feel-good” hormones in the brain that make you happy. This isn’t a transitory effect, either; it lasts all day and over the long term increases your overall, permanent level of happiness.
Improved Relationships
When you start your day with gratitude, you clear your brain and are in a much better space to relate to the people you care about most. This makes it easier to maintain healthy, caring relationships. This improvement starts almost immediately and lasts over the long run.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the benefits you can get from deliberately beginning each day with gratitude. It really is life-changing. Also, you don’t have to struggle to fit it into your schedule. Once you start and your mind starts shifting, it will become an automatic habit. Another win is that it is 100% free. Gratitude is available to anyone, anywhere.
There are no hard and fast rules for how to start a gratitude practice. I always tend to think that when we take the time to write things down, it supercharges what we are doing. It’s almost like a way of saying to your soul, “hey, this really matters.” But if you feel like you can’t stop and write, that’s ok. Just make a point of really sitting for a minute with your gratitude.
Start Your Gratitude Practice With My Gift To You: Three FREE Colorful Gratitude Trackers
Sometimes a little spash or color and some fun new pages make all the difference when trying to start a new habit. So, with a quick sign-up below, you can have three of my favorite gratitude trackers. You can print as many copies as you want and fill up a whole binder with daily gratitude.
Make a promise to yourself that you will write at least one thing on your new sheets every day for 3 weeks. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. As a matter of fact, training your mind to see gratitude in the simple things will very quicly give you superpowers.
So, click to download now and in 3 weeks, share with me what your experience was.
