FCP S2E6 - How Can Practicing Gratitude Improve Our Lives?

How often do you show gratitude? Being grateful is a habit everyone should adopt because it can change your entire outlook on life.

Sometimes we get comfortable with our situation and start to take it for granted which can lead to unhappiness and feelings of inadequacy.

This week on the podcast, we're discussing how to embrace gratitude and make it a regular habit. Each of us has our own experience and opinions on showing gratitude so there's more than one way to integrate the habit into your life.

How Gratitude Can Change Your Life

Having gratitude provides many benefits that can change your entire life for the better. First, it's been proven that gratitude can improve your quality of life. The 'you only live once' mantra really comes into play here because you don't want to spend all your time complaining about how things aren't good enough, being envious of others, or making a mental list of everything you don't have.

Gratitude improves your quality of life by allowing you to be more positive and enthusiastic about your present and the future. You'll also be less stressed and have a lower risk for mental illnesses like depression.

Bring grateful also forces you to work with what you have and embrace your current state instead of worrying about having more and more things.

When you think about it, it feels pretty good to be grateful and live in the moment and embrace the imperfection of everyday life.

Finally, being grateful allows you to put things into perspective and be realistic. There's nothing wrong with setting goals and wanting to improve your life but starting with a mindset that includes gratitude can help you get there faster and stop bring so hard on yourself.

3 Quick Ways to Become More Grateful

Realize that you haven't really been showing a lot of gratitude lately? You're not alone. It's easy to lose sight of what you should be grateful for each day and only be reminded during certain holidays or on birthdays.

It's important to get into the habit of being grateful each day because special days like holidays come and go and they aren't the only time of year that you should be grateful.

Here are three quick ways to help you get back on track:

1. Write down or make a mental list of everything you have to be grateful for. Even the simplest things can make it on the list like having clean water, a roof over your head, your health, a job (even if you aren't crazy about it), etc.

2. Tell someone who plays an important role in your life 'thank you' and make sure they know how grateful you are for them.

This could be your significant other, your sibling or parent, a coworker, a trainer at your gym, or even a staff member at the office you work at.

If someone makes even the smallest difference in your life each day whether it's holding the door for you or remembering your morning coffee order so it's ready quicker, be sure to show gratitude and mean it.

3. Think of a bad situation and how being grateful can turn it into something positive.

This shouldn't be difficult since it's usually easier for us to think of the negative aspects of our lives.

If you don't like something about your life, be constructive and try to turn it into a positive. For us, we all started personal finance blogs that catapulted exciting new careers as online entrepreneurs. We wouldn't be where we are today if we didn't start by practicing gratitude, then take our issues with debt and personal finance, and turn it into something positive.

Being grateful doesn't mean you should just settle and don't have to take action to improve your life. It actually can mean the opposite. To learn more about gratitude and how you can use it to change your life, be sure to listen to this week's episode.

In this episode we discuss: 1:45 - Erin talks about her passion for practicing gratitude 3:20 - Chonce shares how she practices gratitude 5:20 - Kayla talks about being grateful daily 7:00 - Using a gratitude journal to remember to be thankful each day 8:30 - The power of gratitude in business 9:45 - Gratitude as a push for success 11:15 - Using gratitude to create abundance 18:30 - Gratitude overcoming inadequacy 24:40 - The problem with thinking, "things could be worse" Related Links to Check Out: How to Stop Being a Perfectionism The Power of Habits Over Resolutions How to Get Away From Keeping Up with the Joneses Let Go of What You Don't Want and Create More Space Recommended product: The One Minute Gratitude Journal Recommended product: Gratitude Journal: A Daily Appreciation

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