How Do You Live A Life of Gratitude?

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.”

-John F. Kennedy

How Do You Live A Life of Gratitude?

April 7, 2024

Greetings ReadCash!

For years now, I've tried to make it a habit to write down at least 5 things that I am grateful for every morning. Although I admit that there were times, that I fail to write them down, but I at least think of the things I am grateful for.

Source: Unsplash

One benefit of making a short list everyday is, we become more appreciative of what we have every single day. Even for the bad things that happen to us.

Often times we fail to be greatful for the little things that we have every day. How many times have we said thank you for the glass or bottle of cold water that we drink to quench our thirst. Not just saying thank you... but being really grateful.

Maybe a decade ago we can safely drink the water from our tap. Moreover, I remember we get our drinking water for FREE! Yes, because we collect rainwater!

These days we have buy water to drink which was given by God for FREE!

How many of us are greatful for the fresh air that we breath? I think we really should. I fear that we if we don't appreciate that we are still breathing clean air, we will be buying oxygen tanks to breath clean air in the years to come.

AI-generated image via bing.com/create

Benefits of Being Grateful

Some of the benefits of being grateful of the little things we have are:

1. Appreciative of the things we often ignore. Being grateful we come appreciative of the things we take for granted. Have you noticed the beauty of wild flowers growing in a vacant lot somewhere? Did you notice how hardworking the janitor(s) in your office is(are)?

2. Develop positive mindset. Once we become appreciative of the little things, we develop a positive mindset. Even when things don't go as planned we see the positive side of things and thankful for it. Remember, whevener we fail in a task, we learned a new way NOT to do it. With a positive mindset, we will be complaining less.

3. We start to value the little things. Perhaps we have failed to appreciate the value of FREE water. These days our water sources are so polluted that they are no longer safe for drinking. Even rainwater is not that safe to drink because of all the pollutants that we throw into the atmosphere.
   (Whew! I have just finished drinking 600 ml of water while writing
   this!)

These are just few of the benefits that I recognised in being grateful. This leads the title question...

How Do You Live A Life of Gratitude?

JFK's words of wisdom comes with a challenge. How do we show our gratitude?

Expressing our gratitude in words is one thing... but showing it is a different thing.

When we were given gifts for our birthday, Christmas, or for some other reasons, we say thank you to the giver. A better way to show your appreciation however, is to take care of it, and even use it.

1. Use it. Let's say if you gave someone a shirt or anything wearable. How do you feel when you see that person wearing what you have given? You would be delighted right? Moreover, you would like to give something more to that person, right?

2. Share your blessings. I believe when we were given something, we are meant to share it. It may be in monetary form, or something intangible like our talents.

   1. Pay forward. Another way of sharing your blessings is by paying forward. I think this is apparent in social network platform like this. We get "tipped" for our content. Sometimes, we just get tipped by someone who wanted to help us. We can show our appreciation by helping others too.

3. Take care of it. When we value things, we wanted it to last as long as possible right? To make sure that something would last long and keep it valuable, we take of it, right? Otherwise we will lose it. Think of the drinking water we have these days. We have to buy them when decades ago, we can drink water for free!

I think that's the law of the universe. Once we show that we appreciate things, we will be given more. On the other hand, if we don't appreciate `, we will lose them in the future.

Thank You

That being said, I am grateful for writing platform where I can share my thoughts and talent. I am also grateful for all the people from across the globe that I met here. Moreover, I have learned a lot of things on different topics from this platform. Thus, I shall continue to share my works here.

Challenge:

Can you think of some other ways how to live a life of gratitude? Please do share.

Thank you.

Post No. 2024-6
Date Posted: April 7, 2024.

Co-posted in Hive via Ecency.
All image are mine unless otherwise indicated.
* The cover image used was created using Canva
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