If someone asked you, right now, to say or write down five things that you are grateful for in this moment – What would your five things be?

In November, around Thanksgiving, we can naturally and easily say we are grateful or thankful – But what about other times of the year? What if gratitude became a daily practice?

Daily Gratitude Practice

Making gratitude a daily practice is easy.  Simply use a beautiful blank book and each night before you go to bed, write in your book five things that you can be grateful about your day. This blank book, now filled with your gratitude for each day will be your Gratitude Journal.  I first learned about the idea of the Gratitude Journal from a wonderful book called “Simple Abundance” by Sarah Ban Breathnach. If you haven’t read this book, I recommend it.

Gratitude can and does affect our attitude in several positive ways: for example, if we are grateful it’s quite likely we have:

• a highly level of positive emotions
• life satisfaction
• optimism
• lower levels of depression and stress
• the capacity to deal well with the negative aspects of life
• the ability to see life from another person’s perspective
• a generous and caring nature
• the capacity to be empathetic and
• an attitude that material things in life just don’t matter as much

Interestingly, studies also indicate that grateful people do not necessarily look at the world through rose colored glasses.  In fact, grateful people are more aware of the negative elements of society.  For many, feeling grateful doesn’t mean that everything in their lives is great; but perhaps it’s because of their awareness of the negative that they do have a healthy an positive attitude towards all the things for which they are thankful. (“Create a Magical Life…with gratitude!” by Dr. Stacey Scott)

Looking for ways to help you manage the stress in your life and ways to find joy and appreciation? Check out my Yoga, Mindfulness, and Meditation Tool Box on my website.

To find out more goto: www.peacefulyoga.net