How To Be Happier – Increasing Happiness Through Gratitude

Everyone wants to be happy, yet few people know how to be happier. In part, because few people know of the power of gratitude. It’s easy to increase your levels of happiness, if you know of this power.

To help you understand the power of gratitude, we’ll first look at what gratitude is and some of its benefits. Then we’ll see what gratitude’s relation to happiness is. Following that, we’ll explore ways of practicing gratitude. These will be practical and easy. Let’s begin.

What Is Gratitude?

In essence, gratitude is the quality of being thankful and appreciative. To practice gratitude is to be grateful. It’s to be appreciative of what you have.

Many of us get caught up in our consumer culture, filled with immediate gratification. Unfortunately, this search can blind us to what we already have.

Take a minute to think about all the things you have in your life. A roof over your head – shelter. Access to food whenever you want it. Clean drinking water available instantly. Even WIFI is a blessing. Some people, somewhere in the world, do not have access to these things. Let alone them all.

It’s not that hard to be grateful. When you live with this knowledge that you take so much for granted, knowing how to be grateful is obvious. Remember the things you have. Understand that your circumstances are better than a lot of people. This feeling, if you’re feeling anything, is gratitude. Nice, huh?

Assuming you’re living in a modern country, here are a few things you have. You can use this list as a reminder, just to name a few:

• Clean and running water
• Edible food and a vast choice of options available. Many instantly.
• Heating
• Shelter
• Friends and family
• The Internet (and probably a good connection)
• Technology! A device to read this on.

At any given moment, there are hundreds of things you can be grateful for. Someone let you skip in front of them in the queue? Thank them and be grateful. Likewise for the light turning green at the right time, or a friend linking you a funny video. It doesn’t necessarily have to be caused by a person. Thanking the Universe is equally powerful -it’s certainly more spiritual.

Once you know the kind of things to look for, it’s easy to identify things to be grateful for and appreciative of.

Benefits of Gratitude

You now know what gratitude is. ‘Why bother? What’s the point in practicing gratitude?’ I’ll let the benefits do the talking:

• Better health, both physical and mental
• Increased level of well-being
• Helps to counteract materialism
• Reduces negative emotions
• Motivates self-improvement
• May help with mental illness
• Reduces depression (you can’t be grateful and depressed at the same time)

Gratitude and Happiness

There is a scientific relationship between gratitude and happiness. The more often you practice gratitude, the happier you will be. The happier you are, the longer you live.

Because gratitude is a positive feeling, experiencing it often increases the likelihood of experiencing other positive feelings. A Gratitude Paper from the University of California, Berkeley shared that gratitude cancels out negative emotions. It makes sense. I’ve seen this relationship in myself.

How To Practice Gratitude

Now that you know what to be thankful for, it comes to creating a gratitude practice. Most often, gratitude is practiced daily – at either the beginning or the end of a day. Both are great, even better together.

The best thing to do, though, is to make being grateful a habit. Every time something positive, outside of your control, happens to you, be grateful. I like to say thank you out loud, or do a little gratitude dance (jump around and look silly).

Other than that, there are three simple, primary methods for practicing gratitude:

• Thanking others
• Writing down the things that you are grateful for
• Directing your gratitude in the form of a prayer / thanking the universe

Thanking others

This is the easiest way of practicing gratitude. It’s also good manners, anyway. If someone does something nice for you, thank them and be grateful.

You don’t have to go over the top, thanking them 5 times and soaking in the appreciation. Acknowledge they’ve done something nice and thank them. Take a moment to appreciate the act of kindness, then continue with your day. It’s super easy to form a gratitude practice doing this alone.

Gratitude from writing

Another method of practicing gratitude is listing things that you are grateful for. Most often, I combine this with journaling.

At either the beginning or end of each day, list one to three things that you are grateful for. Either focus on things that happened that day, or general things you are grateful for. To better experience this feeling, it’s useful to start each entry with ‘I am grateful’. Some examples include:

• I am grateful for having a productive day
• I am grateful that the weather was good today
• I am grateful that I have a roof over my head
• I am grateful for the tasty burrito I ate today

It’s easiest to do this at the end of a day. It can help pick something specific to reflect on and be grateful for. On the other hand, starting your day with gratitude can put you in a positive and optimistic mood for the rest of the day.

Directed Gratitude

Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, directing your gratitude in the form of prayer is effective. You can direct this to God, the Universe, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or to nothing in particular. Saying it out loud will work just as well.

There’s something beautifully powerful about shutting your eyes and taking a few minutes to appreciate life. To be thankful for the things you have in your life.

If you’re an atheist or agnostic or religious, it can’t hurt to direct your gratitude towards a God. I find it helps to have something to talk to and direct my gratitude towards. Worst case, you get a little happier and the quality of your life improves. Best case, you still get a little happier, and the quality of your life improves, and you get spiritually closer to a possible Higher Power. Might even get you into the afterlife!

Wrapping Up

Gratitude is a powerful force. It’s available for free, any time and anywhere. You’ve now learned how to be happier. Create a gratitude practice and do it daily and you’ll be well on your way to living a happier life.

Forming a gratitude practice will improve the quality of your life, in more than one area. Switching to a more positive outlook on life, made easy through having a gratitude practice, has made a profound difference in my own life and I believe it can for yours, too.

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Thanks for reading (I even practice gratitude in my post signatures).

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