Train Your Brain for Gratitude-Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude- YOU WILL BE BLESSED.

An  attitude of gratitude means making it a habit to express thankfulness and appreciation in all parts of your life, on a regular basis, for both the big and small things alike. Gratitude means thanks and appreciation. ...  Gratitude, which rhymes with "attitude," comes from the Latin word gratus, which  means "thankful, pleasing." When you feel  gratitude, you're pleased by what someone  did for you and also pleased by the results. Unlike indebtedness, you're not anxious about having to pay it back.

How to Have an Attitude of Gratitude

It is that time of year when giving thanks is top of mind. The holiday season, and Thanksgiving in particular, causes us to think about all of the special things in our lives and express gratitude for them. This is a favorite time of year for many, in large part because we are surrounded by loved ones and visibly reminded of all that we have to be grateful for.

If you’re like me, you wish this feeling could last all year long. Just imagine feeling proud, thankful, and joyful on an ongoing basis, not only during the holiday season.

A major step in that direction is developing an “Attitude of Gratitude,” according to New York Times best-selling author Lewis Howes. Howes writes extensively about cultivating a grateful mindset in his highly-inspirational new book, The School of Greatness. As Howes simply says, “Life is better if you develop an attitude of gratitude.”

But what exactly does that mean and how do we do it?

An attitude of gratitude means making it a habit to express thankfulness and appreciation in all parts of your life, on a regular basis, for both the big and small things alike. As Howes puts it, “If you concentrate on what you have, you’ll always have more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you’ll never have enough.”

Here is a menu of tactics (just pick a few!) he endorses to help develop this mindset:

• Wake up every day and express to yourself what you are grateful for
• Tell whoever you are with at the end of the day the 3 things you are most grateful for
• Tell whoever you are with right now (significant other, friend, family member, etc.) the 3 things that you are most grateful for in this moment
• Start a gratitude journal - Express gratitude in this journal every night by noting the things that you are grateful for, proud of, and excited about
• Acknowledge yourself for what you have done and accomplished in the last day/week/month/year. Instead of comparing yourself to others, give yourself credit for the big and small things you have been doing!
• Acknowledge other people and thank them for inspiring/helping/supporting you - oftentimes people wait their whole lives to be acknowledged (and yet it happens far too infrequently)!

If the gratitude process is hard to get started, begin by asking yourself, “What  could I be grateful for?”, and see if the ideas start to flow. This is a mindset habit that is recommended by Tony Robbins in his book,  Awaken the Giant Within.

Every day won’t be perfect, but focusing on what we are grateful for tends to wash away feelings of anger and negativity.

And in addition to improving mood, recent studies show that feeling and expressing gratitude leads to better physical health as well. Paul Mills, a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, conducted studies that looked at the role of gratitude on heart health.

Among other things, he found that participants who kept a journal most days of the week, writing about 2-3 things they were grateful for (everything from appreciating their children to travel and good food), had reduced levels of inflammation and improved heart rhythm compared to people who did not write in a journal. And the journal-keepers also showed a decreased risk of heart disease after only 2 months of this new routine!

Reasons You Should Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude

Here are the three biggest reasons why you need a gratitude practice.

1. Gratitude shifts your mindset

For something to change in your life, one of two things has to happen: your life changes, or you do. Waiting for life to change is a pretty passive solution. When you’re stuck in a problem mentality you miss out on all the opportunities for solutions that are knocking on your door every day, simply because you don’t even hear them or see them.

Open your eyes to a gratitude practice and all of a sudden things start to fall into place for you and for your business. Being an entrepreneur means being proactive, not passive, so switch your mindset and see life change.

How? Start by keeping a daily list of events that you are grateful for each night. Some call it a gratitude journal. You can call it whatever you want. But focusing on who came to your aid that day, what opportunities arose and how the day planted fruitful seeds for a better tomorrow will prove to you day after day that you are well taken care of and capable of succeeding with all the help that surrounds you.

2. Gratitude creates solutions

Adopting a gratitude practice takes you out of problem and toward a solution. It removes you from complaining mode and into a best-outcomes mindset. That’s a skill you need in your life and in your business decision-making. Whole companies and industries have been created from seeing solutions where others only saw obstacles. What will your contribution be?

How? Simply start by keeping a mental checklist of your triggers. We all have our things that set us off into complaining or annoyance. What are your complaint triggers during the day? Just observe them for a few days and keep a list as they pop up. Then try to set some time at the end of the week, 15 minutes should be enough, to look at those triggers and brainstorm solutions.

This can be part of your integrated gratitude practice because if you can see the opportunity in the challenges you face, you will probably be onto to solving a pain-point for many other people as well. Gratitude has a ripple effect that could just echo through your startup.

3. Gratitude is contagious

I can’t speak for you, but I personally don’t like being in business with jerks. I don’t like whiners, complainers or otherwise unpleasant-to-be-around people. There are too many smart, talented and pleasing-to-be-around individuals in this world for me to want to work with or hire the ones that aren’t.

When you’re grateful you tend to exude and share that contagious positive energy. People like me like that and we tend to be drawn to you. Our energy is contagious and we do good things together and are better for having come together. That’s pretty much the only contagious thing happening in the world right now that you can get excited about.

How? Watch your words. What you say is usually how you act, so be aware of complaining and replace whines with positive words. Start with you, be the change and watch as the world changes around you and your gratitude practice.

How to Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

The Effects of Gratitude Last Longer Than You Think

Feeling and expressing gratitude can make you happy in the moment—just think back to the joy you felt the last time a friend helped you out or your partner cooked a gourmet dinner—and a growing mound of evidence shows that giving thanks can also have a lasting effect on your mood. One study from the University of Pennsylvania found that people who wrote and delivered a heartfelt thank-you letter actually felt happier for a full month after, and the same researchers discovered that writing down three positive events each day for a week kept happiness levels high for up to six months.

Tools for Thankfulness

So how can you cultivate a growing sense of gratitude—and its positive side-benefits—on your own? It turns out that the tools used by psychologists in research studies—namely a gratitude journal and some thank-you notes—are some of the best ones for boosting gratitude both in and out of the lab. By writing down positive things that happen to you and actively acknowledging those who have helped you, you become better at recognizing the good in your life, which naturally helps you feel more grateful and thankful more often. You can also find dozens of fun gratitude activities on Happify!

What Grateful People Have in Common

Of course, the actual goal isn't to have a notebook full of your declarations of gratitude, but rather to make gratitude a default feeling. According to researchers at Eastern Washington University, there are four primary characteristics of grateful people, and these are the ones that thank-you notes and a gratitude journal can help tap, strengthen, and invigorate. People who experience the most gratitude (and therefore the positive effects) tend to:

• Feel a sense of abundance in their lives
• Appreciate the contributions of others to their well-being
• Recognize and enjoy life's small pleasures
• Acknowledge the importance of experiencing and expressing gratitude

Train Your Brain for Gratitude

Whether or not these attitudes come to you naturally, paying attention to life's positives can train you to see more and more of them, which will help you learn to be more grateful. You might feel blessed that good weather allowed you to get out for an afternoon run, that a stranger lent a helping hand, that you made it to the bus on time, or that your kids offered to do the dishes. Acknowledging these things—on paper, with words, through Happify, or even in your thoughts—will help you cultivate an attitude of gratitude—and with it, a boost in happiness that will last year-round

So try adopting some of the above tactics, even just one or two, in order to develop an overall grateful mindset. It takes a bit of work, but having an attitude of gratitude is one of the most impactful habits for a fulfilling and healthy life.