Are you wondering why life is unfair? Are you going through the ‘why me?’ phase? Then, it’s time to bring in a new perspective. Yes, life will have bad phases and sometimes, it feels unfair too. But when we look deeper, we will notice that even in bad phases, there is a lot of abundance and goodness. Many of us only focus on what we don’t have and rarely acknowledge the blessings present in our life. So, when something does not happen as we wish, we forget about all the blessings we have and think life is horrible and unfair. You can change this by practicing gratitude. By regularly practicing gratitude in life, you become happier, peaceful, and relaxed. With gratitude in your heart, you will be able to walk through the challenging phases of life with a smile and find the inner strength to solve the challenges. In this blog, I will share with you the benefits of practicing gratitude and how you can start your gratitude journey.
Need of gratitude
When we look around, there is nothing but abundance, goodness, and blessings. It’s amazing how life is so rich and abundant. But we don’t acknowledge that. Forget acknowledgment. We continuously crib about things that went wrong or things that did not happen as we expected. And we keep craving for various things.
The best part is – whatever we crave, we will achieve it someday. At least after we achieve what we want, we should have gratitude. But no. Our mind does not work that way. We quickly lose interest in what we achieved, and we again crave something else. This loop goes on forever. Basically, gratitude is completely missing from our lives.
When we don’t have gratitude for what we already have, we get into a negative mode of bitter and resentful, victimized state. When we are in these negative states, even if life wants to give us, we cannot receive it. Everything keeps bouncing back. That’s one reason things we want don’t happen, or success does not come to us.
My journey with gratitude
For me, gratitude was a journey. I consciously learned to practice gratitude in life. Initially, I didn’t have much gratitude. I was cribbing about various situations and things. It came to peaks when my acting career did not take off. I could not see all the wonderful blessings and the great things that were around me. I focussed only on the things I was not getting. As a result, I felt victimized.
The day I realized this and took a break from negativity, I went into self-introspection. One of the first things I discovered in self-introspection was gratitude – which is so pure and beautiful. When I went within, I found immense gratitude for life. Just being alive itself is so gratifying.
Benefits I gained by practicing gratitude
Gratitude is within all of us, but it’s hidden by our cribbing and dissatisfaction. Till I consciously practiced gratitude, I thought only acting is my way. But once I started practicing gratitude, I realized there is so much I could do in life. If I could not become an actor, so what? There are other doors and opportunities right in front of me. I could work with my dad as an assistant director. I could be an executive producer. There was so much going on.
When I realized this, I was happy with my life and started working as an assistant director. I also looked at the production angle and learned so much. When I started having gratitude for various things in my life, more and more opportunities came my way. Finally, what I wanted – acting – that has also worked out. And I believe that it was my gratitude that brought me what I wanted.
What did I learn about gratitude?
This experience taught me that having gratitude is one of the most important things in life. It’s more important than love itself. Gratitude is a superior form of love. It’s a very deep, high level of loving. There was a remarkable difference in my life when I practiced gratitude. With gratitude, I became happier, more peaceful, and more productive in life.
I noticed that when we have gratitude, we start enjoying life and become simple people. We live life with humility. Whether things happen or not like how we want, we can still be happy and peaceful. And the best part is things we want also happen when we have gratitude. It’s a bonus. Whether we accept it or not, believe it or not, that’s how life works.
Like anything else, gratitude needs to be practiced daily and made part of our life. Gratitude may not come naturally to many of us. It’s something we need to learn and practice regularly.
My daily gratitude practice
I practice immense gratitude every day consciously for all the blessings in my life, like my work, family, abundance, prosperity. I am grateful for my health and fitness. I thank the divine for all the creativity, inspiration, and strength. There is so much in life we can thank – God, self, family members, Sun, Sunrise, cool breeze. Our body – what a miracle! Everything functions in autopilot mode. Emotions and thoughts and everything in perfect coordination. Oh! So many things to thank in life. And this emotion of gratitude recharges me and keeps me in high spirits.
How to start your gratitude journey?
Just go out of your home on a drive. Notice the world around you. Observe the roads. Notice the people. There are many people in this world who cannot afford two meals a day. There are many bright children who cannot afford education. Here, we have food. We can choose which restaurant to go to. We have so many blessings in life like a comfortable home, a wardrobe full of clothes, comforts of modern life, education, wonderful family, and the list goes on. All these blessings are dreams of millions of people in the world.
Go for this gratitude drive and see what life is. Come back and take out your gratitude journal. Keep a new book as a gratitude journal to note down all the blessings in your life. You will be amazed at the number of blessings you can jot down.
So, start your gratitude journey today with this simple but eye-opening gratitude drive. I want to tell you that if there is a single most important thing in life, it’s gratitude. If you have gratitude, you will have everything in life. So, start your journey today. Want to read more about gratitude? Check out this amazing book – the magic – by Rhonda Byrne.
Wish you and your family the best!
