“focus on the positive things in your life, and you’ll be shocked at how many more positive things start happening.” – sophia amoruso
Throughout the week, we delved into strategies to remove literal toxins from our physical space. Today, we’re shifting our focus to decluttering our mind. We firmly believe it begins with a grateful heart.
A new perspective on gratitude
Think of a time your heart swelled with gratitude. Perhaps it was a holiday memory with your family, while reading your child a bedtime story, or opening a letter you received from a good friend. That full-heart feeling is something you can cultivate on a day-to-day basis by taking the time to focus on gratitude. When you’re full of gratitude, it is all consuming and leaves little room for stressors, sadness, jealousy, or any other negative feeling. Start thinking of gratitude as a tool that can be used to clear our minds of those toxic thoughts and harmful stressors. It can be used to maintain control over ourselves, even in stressful or difficult situations. In fact, studies have found when feeling grateful, people experience increased self-control.
Incorporate it into daily life
There are many ways to incorporate gratitude into daily life – we recommend trying a few strategies to see what works for you.
1) Journaling
Capturing a moment of gratitude is inspiring in the moment, but it also creates a document of positive memories. It can be rewarding to capture written gratitude first thing in the AM – before turning to iPhones and emails. Here are a two of our favorite journals
Moleskine – the perfect morning companion for your moment of gratitude
One-Sketch-A-Day Visual Journal – for those who prefer to sketch their gratitude
2) Letters (read: not an email or a facebook message)
When it comes to gratitude for others, we simply don’t share or express it often enough. Handwritten letters or notes to others are an effective, and often contagious, way to spread gratitude. These tokens say “I appreciate you enough to pause and take time out of my busy day to think about how important you are in my life.” Dedicate a few minutes each week to some quality time with your favorite stationary. Your loved ones will appreciate it, and your mind will too.
3) Change your password
If you are anything like us, you spend a lot of time resetting passwords because you routinely forget one of the 1,500 passwords we must remember to navigate our modern lives. Transform this mundane and frustrating task to one that reminds us to be grateful. Try incorporating something you are grateful for in your next password reset. It can serve as a reminder to pause – even for a second – to focus on the positive aspects of your life.
Share your own gratitude note with the #BeeGrateful hashtag to join our always-positive online conversation.
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