If you’re like most people, you probably visualize success as a big, fancy house, fast cars, and lots of money. However, according to an article published in Forbes, the real key to success lies in simply being grateful. In fact, being grateful has been proven to promote feelings of happiness, contentment, and awe. These are the underlying factors to opening the door for you to accumulate all those things associated with success. In other words, it leaves you more open to receiving opportunities that can change your life!
If you are tired of being stuck in a rut of despair and are finally ready for real success in your life, experts strongly suggest adopting the following principles to being grateful to help get you out of your slump and on the right path to true happiness.
About Gratitude
Gratitude is simply the act of being thankful; but over time this what-seems-like-it-should-be-natural emotion can become stagnant due to various life factors. However, simply refocusing your attention back to the things that truly matter can help bring back an air of gratitude and inspire good things to flow your way again, which the following tips can help you do.
In fact, many successful entrepreneurs, authors, celebrities, and celebrity power couples, including Tom Brady and Giselle Bundchen, Offset and Cardi B, Jay Z and Beyonce, and more, even credit gratefulness as a contributing factor to their ongoing success.
Just remember, to keep it fun and exciting.View practicing gratitude as more of a sort of extracurricular activity rather than a strict homework assignment, blah!
How to Develop an Attitude of Gratitude
In this world of letdowns, regrets, dissatisfaction, and lack of empathy, it may seem there’s nothing to be grateful for. Or perhaps you’re like some who feel that being thankful makes you somewhat of a weakling. Well, the beautiful thing about being grateful is it’s a personal thing. OF course, that means it can be done in private and no one ever has to know; however, the results are sure to show in every area of your life.
In fact, several studies show that being grateful positively impacts both your emotional as well as your mental state and your ability to achieve the goals you want, giving you a reason to at least consider it.
To inspire gratefulness in the minute, especially when you’re in a stale state, simply turn your focus on the good of the moment, or think back to a time when you barely escaped a bad situation. For instance, maybe a time when your brakes went out on your car, and you swerved just in the nick of time to avoid going over the hill, which could have crashed your car and left you or a loved one seriously injured.
It probably left you aware of just how fragile life really is and how grateful you are to be alive and uninjured. When you view it like that, having things suddenly don’t seem so important anymore. In fact, you realize suddenly that all the things you think you need to feel satisfied and fulfilled are just an addition.
It’s also what some spiritual advisers say is what it means to live, meaning you have let go of the things you think you really want in order to truly enjoy life’s treasures and reap the benefits of the moment.
How to Remain Grateful
Each day, either in the morning, before bedtime, or both, a fellow journal keeper recommends keeping a grateful journal as a way to help you practice gratitude every day for a greater sense of accomplishment, which may be especially useful after a trying day or if you simply want to begin your day on a positive note.
Some things you might ponder and then write about to help you practice gratitude include thinking about these:
- Two good things that happened the day before
- Anything enjoyable you got to do the previous day. Did you have a chance to read a good book, watch a good movie to a chance to talk to a friend? Did you do anything memorable?
- A person you are grateful for
- Anyone from among your loved ones, such as your friends or family, who have helped you in some way or who were happy you helped them.
- A place you are grateful for. Think of your favorite place to get away and how you feel when you are there.
- The skill you are grateful for. Name anything you’re good at from your ability to tune out distractions to cooking or anything else you’re good at that makes you, you.
- Any two of life’s blessings. Think of all your blessings and let them roll!
In the end, the key to success lies within you. So your ability to recognize and adopt the right attitude of gratefulness towards the right things. Trust the universe–the rest will follow. It is also important to get your family and friends involved, so you can all be on the same page and enjoy beautiful success together!