Gratitude has been part of my mindfulness practice since I read research that found if you write 3 things a day you are grateful for, for a week – 6 months later you will have a stronger sense of well-being than someone who doesn’t!
So lets do that this week – lets share what we are grateful for! Even on a really bad day – I can shift my tight, grumpy mindset by starting with ‘ I am grateful for fresh water, for food, for shelter, for a way of contacting a friend….and then it flows – I can be grateful for lots of other things! Actively practicing gratitude can change how I feel about life in that moment.
Jack Kornfield shares a great story of a woman who began writing daily what she was grateful for – initially she struggled to come up with 3 things, after awhile she could fill 2 pages, and after a year she was even able to feel genuinely, within herself – grateful for the hard stuff, the not so good bits of life!
Brene Brown in The Gifts Of Imperfection has just BLOWN me away with her research (I’ve been reading her book this weekend)! She found that every person she interviewed ‘who described themselves as living a joyful life – actively practiced gratitude – and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice‘ (p77-78) I had never linked gratitude and joy together!!! But it makes sense, we can truely enjoy the moment when we allow ourselves to feel grateful for it!!
People in her research reported keeping gratitude journals, doing gratitiude meditations / prayers, creating gratitude art or stopping during their busy day and saying out loud ‘I am grateful for…’ What a cool idea!!!!
So here is some gratitude art I had a lot of fun making on the weekend – to remind me to be grateful and I would love to know how you will bring more gratitude into your life? Let’s share the things we are grateful for….
Deep Heart Wisdom 
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