Make Gratitude Your New Normal

Make gratitude the new normal in your life.

As we welcome fall, we begin the season leading up to the big day of gratitude – Thanksgiving – when we celebrate all of our blessings with friends and relatives.

I love fall for this very reason. Gratitude comes into the spotlight! Then, after Thanksgiving, comes the season of giving (Christmas/Hanukkah) and more gratitude and goodwill. Win-Win.

Then, sometime in January, we go back to the “real world” of uncertainty, resolutions, frustration, maybe even depression, right?

So, what if we started now and practiced daily gratitude to make it a habit – our new normal – year-round?

The benefits of making gratitude a daily part of your life are many. Hundreds of studies have proven it improves your health, helps you sleep better, extends your life, and increases feelings of happiness and self-worth. It will do more than just add joy to your life, it will also help you build your resilience, by focusing on what is important right now and putting things out of your control in the proper perspective.

Here are some ways to move into making the power of gratitude your new normal.

Make a mindset shift.

Using gratitude is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced. It is a mindset shift. It changes your perspective from focusing on the negative in your life to embracing what’s going right on a regular basis.

In times of stress or overwhelm, it’s even more important to seek out gratitude pick-me-ups that can help us shift to a happier, more optimistic mindset.

To make a mindset shift, you must seek out and practice it in your life, every day. You’ll find it will be even the small, yet important things, in our lives that will help you do this.

Start a Gratitude Journal.

An organized way to help build the habit is to use a gratitude journal. Studies have found that spending 5 minutes a day with a journal writing down what you are thankful for can increase your long-term well-being.

Keeping a regular journal is one of the easiest ways to practice regular gratitude. But the benefits you’ll get doesn’t happen overnight. The chart below shows that it takes a few weeks for the habit to make a difference in your life.

 Start Today

So, friends, I challenge you to start or step up your daily practice of gratitude today.

If you don’t have a copy of my Intentional Gratitude journal – or want one to give to a friend or family, this season you can order them from Amazon here.

Free 7 Days of Gratitude

If you want to see a sample, you can download 7 Days of Gratitude for free.

Even without a journal, you can get the same benefits by:

• Begin every day with three things that you’re grateful for.
• Spend time during your day to notice and celebrate small moments of joy.
• Communicate often with loved ones, encourage your neighbors and friends, and live a life of gratitude!
• End your day with gratefulness for what went well during the day and count your blessings instead of your trials.
• Each day this month, list a few things you are grateful for on a pumpkin - or other item (a thin sharpie pen works great). Use it as a centerpiece or decoration:

I hope you fully enjoy this beautiful season.

cover photo credit: Carolyn Cummins