A surprising new gratitude practice that seems a little too easy and too good to be true. Yet, I’m here to tell you this one is both easy and true.
And while this surprising new gratitude practice is a bit unique to me, it’s easy enough to adapt for just about anyone.
Why Gratitude Matters
According to this article from Harvard, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with more overall happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.
Since I’m always looking for ways to be a little happier, my surprising new gratitude practice fits the bill nicely.
Different Strokes For Different Folks
Since every person is a unique individual, they people feel and express gratitude in unique and different ways. In fact, I’d be willing to bet after you discover what my surprising new gratitude practice is, you’ll agree it’s perfect for me.
The key is to understand how to create your own surprising new gratitude practice. For that let’s look at the ways in which you can create gratitude for just about any situation.
Gratitude For Any Situation?
While I know that thought of applying gratitude to any situation sounds it’s own surprising new gratitude practice. I mean, most of us know how to be grateful in the good times but do you know how to be grateful in the bad times, too? It’s true, so let’s explore how.
Gratitude Past, Present or Future
Believe it or not, while we often think about gratitude as something we’re appreciative for in the moment. Gratitude doesn’t have to only be applied to the present.
While we typically know when we’re practicing gratitude in the present or in the moment. We often think of gratitude is writing in our gratitude journals or saying Thank You God (or whatever higher being). And both of those examples are true.
However, applying gratitude in the present also means not taking good fortune for granted as it comes. And honestly, that doesn’t just mean the big things.
Think about the awesome little things that happen to you almost every day. Things like you had to run an errand and somehow managed to get an up close parking space. Or you’re in the store and get an unexpected discount or find something you had been thinking about but almost forgotten.
All of these little things are awesome opportunities to express gratitude in the moment. And if you’re a believer in the Law of Attraction, you know “like attracts like”.
Therefore the more things you find to be grateful for, the more things you’ll attract to be grateful for.
Gratitude Looking Back
Practicing gratitude for the past is easy enough for positive past memories. However, one part of my surprising new gratitude practice also applies to the past. Even for things that aren’t so great.
As an example, our house fire in January, pretty much destroyed the home we raised our family in for the past 20 years. I was absolutely devasted by the magnitude of the loss, not to mention being displaced from the home we loved.
Almost immediately, after assessing the damage the next day, I shifted into gratitude. I knew with the amount of damage to our home, we were lucky to be alive.
So, I went about finding as many Silver Linings in the situation as I could so I shift into a happier place. I even created a playlist on my Tiktok page called Looking For Silver Linings. Sometimes, I go back and look at the videos in that playlist to remind me to stay encouraged. It helps me see how far we’ve come since then.
To The Future And Beyond
Some people are big worriers. I’m not a big worrier because I’m someone who likes to try to control the controllables. That way if I take care of everything I can do on my end, I can focus on maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude about outcomes.
If it’s something outside of my control, I pray about it and move on. I figure either you’re going to trust God or you’re going to worry. But you literally can’t do both.
The Big Reveal My Surprising New Gratitude Practice
So, putting it all together is what leads me to my surprising new gratitude practice. Looking back at the past, despite losing about 99% of my prior inventory, I’ve decided to be grateful for the things I learned. Though two years of collecting went down the drain, I’m constantly refreshing my inventory.
One of the things that I learned from the loss is I wish I had gotten more of the beautiful cups into inventory so you all could see them. They bring me such joy sourcing them and then showcasing them.
Unfortunately, there were so many amazing cups I never got into inventory and I never got to showcase. That’s a lesson learned from the past for which I can be grateful today.
So, I’ve decided to find a group of cups every week that bring me joy. Enter them into inventory and then showcase them on my this blog as some of my favorites for that week.
The Dolphin Collection is one example of the a group of my favorites. I’ll give you a sneak peak into another one that’s coming up.
A Sneak Peak
Inspired by the love of the beach and a good martini, my Beach Martini collection will be one you can expect to see in an upcoming post.
I’m trying to decide on the day, I’ll publish it. I’ll also set up a section called My Favorites. That will give me plenty of opportunities to showcase some of my favorites even in between blog posts.
Drop me some comments to let me know what you think of my surprising new gratitude practice. And let me know what day you’d like to see it come out.
Until next time,
Namaste,
Khadeeja
