Did you know that a 5-minute daily gratitude journal can increase long-term well being by ten percent? Gratitude is such an important part of my morning routine, and honestly an important part of my life altogether. Every day without fail, I start and end my day by thinking about everything that I am grateful for. If you follow a similar routine, then chances are that gratitude has impacted your life in a very positive way. For me, this positive impact has been the following:

Better Sleep, Less Stress, More Presence in the Current Moment, Not taking anything for granted, and most importantly gratitude has changed my perspective on life itself. I rarely complain because I understand that what I have in my life is a blessing and should be treated as such.

This blog post explores the real reasons why your gratitude practice is not working. Firstly, the practice of gratitude in itself has many benefits. So why is it then that many people do not see the positive impact of their gratitude practice in their own lives? I see many people implement a gratitude practice/routine into their schedules. However, after a while it just becomes a checklist task, and not something that you partake in because you want to. People implement a gratitude practice into their routines for different reasons. However, the key to implementing a successful gratitude practice is expressing your gratitude with emotion. Without the involvement of emotion, your gratitude just becomes another task on your to do list. Eventually, your gratitude practice becomes very similar to your habit of brushing your teeth.

Secondly, when we express gratitude we are ultimately thanking the universe for everything in our lives. How then do we make sure that our gratitude practice can inspire us to help others and those in need? How do you practice gratitude throughout your day? Does your gratitude end with the ten minutes you designated to expressing thankfulness in the morning? Do you let your gratitude inspire how much you help other people?

So, the real question I want to answer through this blog is: How can we turn our gratitude into into positive action? How can we use the gratitude we feel for everything in our lives to help someone that may not have everything in their lives? How do you react when you do see someone that is in need of help? Do you immediately react with empathy and remind yourself of why you should continue to be grateful for everything in your life? Or, do you react by using it as reminder of why you should be grateful, and then go on to help the person in need?

So, here is the change I am advocating for by implementing action inspired by my gratitude practice into my own life:

1 – I will provide food to someone who has no access to buying food for themselves.

2 – I will try to help make someone be seen and heard.

3 – I will not bring my stress to the environments I will be present in.

The second we decide to let our gratitude influence our decision to help others, that in itself is a great extension of your gratitude practice all together.

Love,
Manisha