Practicing gratitude?
 

How do incorporate gratitude into your life? I'm looking for inspiration since I know that being grateful leads to happiness. Do you keep a gratitude journal, and if so do you write in it every day? Is it ritualistic? In what other ways do you pratice gratitude?

i really need to do this, my mom keeps a journal and reads the gratitudes she has written down every day and adds to it when she can.
Since i am a Christian i make sure to thank God for all His blessings and name them but i do need to actually take time and make it an "event" like i do with my diet and exercise!

I'm not ritualistic about it, but I feel grateful every day. I lived so many years, probably most of my life, in a sort of fog. Like I was a bit lost and really trying to find my way, but just couldn't. Until I finally did and now I have this clarity. It's not much unlike when people say that everything is more vivid, but it's not quite so dramatic. It's like things were ever so slightly out of focus before and now the picture is clear. I just feel alive, regardless of whether what I feel is happiness or sadness, and I'm immensely grateful for that.

So, it's incorporated into my life rather naturally now. It comes up as spontaneous joy. I was googling whether I could/should use the term "joie de vivre" and found this, which pretty much sums it up: "the quiet joy in being one's self...a spontaneous relaxed enjoyment, a primitive joie de vivre"

Being quietly grateful for almost everything that happens has indeed caused even more happiness and things seem to go my way. It's a very nice bonus, a side-effect of sorts, but just being able to be grateful was already the biggest gift for me. It's one of those paradoxes, where to reach your goal you first have to get there, but you're already there. I feel like I have everything I could possibly want or need, and then the result is that I'm constantly being rewarded with more. Or I just feel like I am, but then...isn't that the whole point of happiness? Contentment with what you have right now and not misery over what you don't have right now.

I use an app for Android called 'Moments of Gratitude'. I use the full version, it's only 99 cents:

https://lh4.ggpht.com/d1FFJhcKTokSR6...Kg70-P1rb=w300

If you have an iPhone, the 1000 Gifts app is the BEST one. BTW I highly highly highly recommend the book 1000 Gifts by Ann Voskamp:

http://thewritelife2.files.wordpress.../1000gifts.jpg

If you are not a smartphone person 'The Secret Gratitude Book' is the best one I have found in a hard copy, pen and paper journal for gratitude. I use it as well when I am not able to use my phone.

http://store.thesecret.tv/images/TS_..._EN_US_1.0.jpg

Thanks, it looks like the app is not available on iphone, but there are others that I can research and use. Good idea.

For some reason, I tend to drift towards the "grateful" point of a lot of things in my life...some I've had to search for lol, like think really hard about to find the part to be grateful for, but I often feel guilty "complaining" about my lot in life, so I try to be grateful...

Like tonight, I reposted a thing on facebook that says "Do not regret growing older, it is a privilege denied to many"...As I creep into my 30s, and just ever so slightly notice a small difference from my 20s, I remind myself of this when ever I dare concern myself with aging. When my thoughts start about what having kids has done to my body, I remember that I should be grateful I have kids, as there are many women that would gladly have stretch marks and saggy ta tas in exchange for a child and I am blessed with 3 (kids, not ta tas)...I even try to be thankful for my weight (not make excuse for) but thankful...that I have enough food and money to buy food that I actually have to make an effort to turn it down/avoid it. But I do still want to lose weight to be healthy.

I don't know how to teach thankfulness...I suspect, for me, it came from having so little growing up...no just money or things, but coming from a disfunctional family, drama, insecurity...so now I feel endlessly grateful for my husband and kids, our home, that we can pay our bills, buy clothes, food...and we can buy fun things too! If I want a book, or gloves I can buy them...yes I am grateful for gloves, because as a kid, I had winters with no coats,..forget gloves...and yes I'm grateful for my coat!

I'm not saying people cant be grateful if they have things, but for me I am grateful for everything because I believe I am entitled to nothing in my life, nothing is promised, not family, health, a home etc...so everything feels like a gift, like "life" has given me something that I didn't deserve...so I'm grateful for it...

Granted there are things that I have a hard time being appreciative for...but I still try. I feel like being ungrateful snowballs easily...and then one starts to feel entitle to good things and has a hard time feeling grateful for something they feel entitled to...I dont want to find myself there.

It sure does snowball. I have found recently that Chi Gong helps me clear negative energy. I'm full of negative energy apparently! I spend 15min a day aligning my chi (I don't even know what it is but yet here I am aligning it) and I truly feel better, more positive, less stressed and with a happy outlook. Sometimes I feel like a tortoise, when other friends are sprinting towards finish lines I can't even seen on the horizon yet. But there are many times I watch them crash and burn and that reminds me, hold steady and I'll get there the right way.