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Gratitude: being grateful makes you live better
By Naturale Bio
gratitude is a concept that encompasses much more than what this term suggests in the strict sense. Being grateful to someone for something positive they have done for us is certainly beautiful and right, but it presupposes a return, a reason to be happy and a person towards whom we can direct our benevolence. And it doesn't even boil down to simply saying “thank you”.
In a broad sense, in fact, gratitude is an approach to life in general, disinterested and a priori, without a cause or an end, without a profit or a justification. It means, in practice, being aware of and giving thanks for every small aspect of our daily life, for the mere fact of being able to be there – alive, healthy and present – to experience it. For better or for worse.
positivity.But which soon becomes aforma mentis, extremely beneficial for the mind, for the organism and for relationships with others: it will make us less stressed, it will allow us to make friends more easily, to resolve family conflicts, perhaps even to make that annoying heartburn go away...
Gratitude and happiness, a very close bond
“But I'm full of problems, what should I be grateful for?”: this is certainly the first note that many of you will be making mentally about this approach.
True, but the truth is that there is a proven correlation between how we relate to life and problems, and how we manage to get out of them. Call it “karma” or simply “take it philosophically”, but being grateful for what you have, for every little beautiful thing, shifts your attention to the positive, and minimizes the negative.
You may have had a bad day at work, argued with a colleague and maybe even scratched your car in a parking lot... butif instead of focusing on these objectively negative aspects, you put them into perspective, everything will seem less bad.
After all, it's sunny, your partner, children and/or your dog are waiting for you at home, who love you unconditionally, you have food on the table, a job, a new dress to wear and a book to read.
Gratitude is an amplifier for happiness: the more grateful you are, the more you notice the thousand small beautiful things in your life, the happier you become. And the happier you become, the more grateful you are for what you have. Simple, right? It's a true virtuous circle
Often,those who have a history of major personal problems, traumas or serious illnesses, are paradoxically more likely to develop gratitude, precisely because they are more aware of the importance of small things and the passage of time. For example, those who have spent a lot of time in hospital know well the feeling of enthusiasm and emotion in finding themselves at home, in their own bed, being able to eat their own food... and will be much more grateful than those who take all this for granted.
Generosity and gratitude, giving and receiving
And gratitude is not only related to happiness but also to generosity.
The more grateful we are, the happier we are; the happier we are, the more we are predisposed to giving.
Being generous is a way to give back, to bring back into circulation the good that we perceive as part of our life, so that it also touches others. Generosity can mean volunteering or charity but not only that: it is not just about engaging socially or making a monetary donation.
You can also be generous with everyday attitudes: helping a tourist who asks for directions on the street instead of walking straight ahead, greeting a slightly lonely elderly person you meet in a bar and having a chat with him instead of ignoring him, helping a child who scraped his knee falling off his bike...
You will realize that these small gestures will do more good for you than for the person you help, and this will make you feel increasingly happy and grateful.
Training to be grateful: keep a diary
Gratitude is a practice that can be trained and refined daily. A good gratitude training is, for example, tokeep a diary in which you write down the 3 things you are grateful for that day every evening.
Putting down in black and white what good has happened to us, even in the worst moments, makes it more concrete and significant. Rereading the diary backwards, after some time, will also give us the measure of how beautiful we experience every day.
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