Practice Gratitude

We’ve all heard of superfoods but what about super emotions? It turns out that gratitude might just be that emotion… and the best bit, it’s incredibly easy to cultivate.

Gratitude is about expressing appreciation for what one has, as opposed to what one wants.

Here are just a few of the scientifically proven benefits of gratitude:

One of the simplest and most studied gratitude practices is three good things. Here are some simple instructions:

1. Every night, just before you go to bed, sit down and look back at your day.

2. Then write down 3 things that went well for you or you felt grateful for that day.

3. Reflect on the causes and what role you played for each.

A couple of tips for enhancing the benefits.

1. Write it down: helps you to focus on the events in a structured way.

2. Reflect on what you did to create or contribute the thing you’re grateful for: this adds to your sense of perceived control and well-being

3. Timing is significant: either do it every day for one week, or try it once a week for six weeks to get the maximum benefit.

Here are a couple of other tips to put gratitude into practice in your household.

Start a “WHAT’S GOOD” jar. At the end of every day, everyone writes something good that happened that day and places it in a jar. It could be as simple as seeing a butterfly. Then at the end of the week, read them out as a household and savour the positive emotions.

Better still, write a gratitude letter to someone that made a difference in your life. This will bring out the strongest positive emotions within you and the person to which you’re writing.

It’s a win, win.