It is just a "Thank You." But when you really mean it and hold on to the feeling of thankfulness, the most amazing things happen to you. Gratitude is a powerful emotion. Being in a state of gratitude and expressing it attract good health, meaningful relationships, and peace into your life. You will be surprised to learn how gratitude improves your well-being (and the following claims are backed by scientific research).
Gratitude improves your interpersonal relationships
When you are thankful for the people in your life and express your gratitude often, your relationships improve. Your loved ones feel appreciated, and in turn, reciprocate these feelings. When you interact with your loved ones from a place of love and gratitude, misunderstandings don’t arise and all parties feel supported by one another.
Gratitude makes you notice and revel in the joys you already have in your life
We all need our little joys in life, the ones that lift us from the gloom of monotony and the disappointment of hopes belied and dreams not fulfilled. A state of gratefulness makes you notice the blessings you already have in your life, so you can revel in them and derive succour knowing that you still have a rich life and that there is no reason to feel deprived or hard-done-by.
Gratitude boosts self-esteem
When you feel abundant, enriched, and fulfilled, you gain in self-esteem and no longer feel compelled to go by the demands of societal conventions. You are happy and content with how your life is unfolding and are not bothered by what others have achieved. You no longer tend to compare yourself and your life’s situation to that of other people and mope over what you don’t have.
Gratitude makes you more compassionate and empathetic
When you acknowledge your blessings and no longer feel deprived or think as if your life lacks something, you are able to get out of your head and move beyond your troubles. When you feel abundant, you are no longer bothered by what you don’t have, and you are able to focus on the lives of others. A state of gratitude makes you more compassionate and empathetic by making you less self-centered.
With increased empathy and compassion, you begin to notice those who are less fortunate than you are. You might want to compare yourself to them and feel grateful for what you have in your life. This is the practice of downward social comparison that enhances your feeling of gratitude.
Gratitude motivates you to nurture the blessings in your life
When you are grateful for your health and vitality, you are motivated to stick to a healthy dieting and exercise regimen. When you are grateful for the presence of your loved ones in your life, you want to nurture these relationships—meet them more often, be there for them when they need you, and tell them that you care about them. When you are grateful for your talents and abilities that let you earn a living, you are motivated to work on them and hone your skills. When you preserve and nurture the blessings in your life, you attract more of them.
Gratitude makes you bold and motivates you to go after your dreams
A feeling of gratefulness makes you realize how blessed you are and how much abundance there is in your life. When you are not suffering from a feeling of lack, you feel emboldened to carry out your plans and aim for your dreams. You are confident of your abilities to overcome challenges and reach your dreams because you know you have already achieved so much, and you can will yourself to achieve more.
Gratitude de-stresses you and brings peace
Yes, you read right. Gratitude helps you de-stress by banishing negative emotions like feeling unworthy and frustrated. When you are comfortable in your own skin and have a healthy self-esteem, you no longer bother to keep up with the Joneses or live a life on somebody else’s terms. When you are able to appreciate what you have in life, you no longer feel compelled to acquire stuff to impress others and raking up debts in the process. Gratitude gives you peace by making you realize that you already have what you need to be happy and no longer have to burn yourself out to follow the herd.
How Guided Meditation Helps You Cultivate Gratitude
Gratitude should be a habit. You should strive to always be in a state of gratitude. But we live in an age of distractions where the media constantly feeds us with messages and images that extol the benefits of a certain kind of lifestyle. We live in an age where the economy is in a constant state of flux and drives fear in our minds. It is hard to believe that we have everything that we ever need to be happy. It is hard to be grateful for what we have when the media wants us to believe we lack what it needs to create the “perfect” life.
At these times, meditation helps you cultivate gratitude. Here’s how:
- By allowing you turn off the autopilot mode. Meditation teaches you to pause in the midst of chaos and frenzy and gives you the space to turn off the autopilot mode. Switching off the autopilot mode prevents you from falling into the trap of believing conventions, misjudging a situation, and reacting and forming opinions hastily.
- By letting you connect to your senses. Meditation lets you tune into your senses. Meditation teaches you to listen to the little voice inside of you and honour your feelings and emotions. When you are able to connect to your senses, you notice readily what feels good to you and what makes your heart sing—irrespective of what people around you say. Being able to connect to your senses lets you discover the little joys in life that would have otherwise been brushed off by societal conventions
- By teaching you to live life mindfully. Meditation teaches you to live mindfully. By meditating regularly, you learn how to be non-judgmental in your responses. Mindfulness lets you analyze a situation, event, or a person with your heart and from a place of kindness, without your senses being colored by societal opinions.
- By letting you discover and focus on the little joys in your life. Meditation creates a quiet mental space for you to focus on the little joys of life. Visual imagery exercises let you recreate in your mind’s eye all that you feel grateful for in your life, take in their feel-good vibes, and amplify your sense of gratitude.
Gratitude is a state of being. You can start practicing to get into this state right away. Meditable’s guided meditation exercises to cultivate gratitude help you enter into this immensely fulfilling and deeply transformative state by gently guiding you to discover what is good in your life, form the images in your mind, and feel the positive emotions, so you can enhance the feeling of gratefulness.
There are ample benefits of doing your gratitude meditation in the mornings and evenings.
Meditating on the things you are grateful for early in the morning enables you to start your day in the right frame of mind. Having focused on the blessings in your life, you can now get through the day without being affected by the disappointments that come in everybody’s life. By acknowledging your blessings, you feel content about what you have and confident of where your life is heading to. When you love yourself, you can respond to people and events from a place of compassion and empathy. Your day thus unfolds the way you would like it to.
Meditating in the evening lets you shrug off the day’s disappointments by acknowledging that you have so much more to be grateful for. This lets you relax and feel at peace. You sleep better knowing that you can always start over the next day.
Some guidance can be of great help in building the habit of morning and evening gratitude meditation. Open the Meditable app and create guided gratitude sessions that fit your needs.