Practicing Gratitude for a More Fulfilled Life
What do you do to make gratitude a part of your everyday life?
A life without gratitude feels empty, lonely, and sometimes even depressing.
In my life, chasing glory is a day-in and day-out affair. I live to accomplish things that I can’t see as possible. However, on a day to day basis it can consume my thinking about all the things I haven’t accomplished, all the things I don’t have, the body parts that should be better... Basically the man I don’t live up to being nor ever will be. This thinking makes me feel “less than”.
The drive gets me up in the morning, but it’s also what can draw me into depression and despair.
The thing that gives me life can also ruin it.
A life cannot be defined by one attribute, but a sum of its parts. That’s why social media is liar. It only highlights the best of one attribute that’s being artificially propped up for display, while making you feel "less than".
Just remember: when you see something that makes you feel "less than", you have so many other qualities that whoever you see on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter don’t have. You just haven't put them on display. And guess what: you don't need to either! You know you are a badass without the external validation. Always be grateful of who you are and how far you've come without letting it become a competition, that derails you from the original point of being yourself.
There is no one who is free of faults and imperfections, so don’t worry if you don’t have what they have. This is where the practice of gratitude becomes imperative. If I don’t have a task a day that makes me evaluate where I came from, it makes me forget all the good things that I currently have in my life. Without gratitude, the great things about me fade into the background and I begin to live a negative, resentful life. The fastest way to not succeed is to not practice gratitude daily.
The trick is for you do it daily, and make it routine.
Maybe it’s daily prayer, gratitude list, volunteer work, or anything that makes your day filled with the motivation mindset to get better every day. Better at being kinder, better at being thankful, better at being genuinely you.
Personally, the pain of the past motivates me to be grateful and better than I was yesterday. I was living a lifestyle that I wasn't proud of. I was old enough to be a man, but yet being a child pretending to be a man. I thought social acceptability meant success. I was a mess, but I looked great on the outside just like people do today for the social media validation.
I look at the photos at that guy today and gratitude sets in like a drug. It turns my perspective into something beautiful.
This only happens if I commit to this process daily. When I don’t practice gratitude, the gift of perspective begins to fade. Working on myself daily keeps me grounded, but what about your life? How are you living? What are you doing to see all of the great things instead of where you don’t measure up? How are you truly practicing gratitude?
Ready to make a change for a better you? CLICK HERE for your free Discovery Call!