are you grateful?

Don’t you just hate that feeling when you get into your car – probably rushing as usual to make an appointment or get to work on time – and it doesn’t start –its so frustrating and annoying.  But what about the other 364 days of the year when the car starts perfectly and gets us about no problem?  Do we feel grateful and thankful for the freedom and convenience that having a car gives us? Probably not because we take it for granted.

Its so easy to concentrate on the things that go wrong, the annoying things in life – the negative things, that we fail to appreciate all the good things around us every day.

If you are feeling down about things that are happening to you, trying to shift that feeling on to the good things can help you to feel a whole lot better. 

Start a gratitude diary – at the end of every day write down 3 good things that have happened to you that day.  It could be a major thing – getting a new job, or a pay rise, or much more likely, a smaller thing – a phone call from a friend, sitting in the park in the sunshine, laughing with a child or enjoying a good meal with your family. 

No matter how down or depressed we feel, we can all come up with three things to be grateful for. As we get into the habit of writing our diary each day – we start to look for the things that we can put into it – we start noticing the good things and focussing on the positive.