Thank You, Thanks, Cheers, Dank u, Danke schön, Merci, Grazie, Gracias, Efcharisto, Tak, Arigato, …
We say it easily, and all the time. And that’s a good thing!
But do we actually think about the deeper meaning of what we’re saying?
Do we feel gratitude while saying it?
“It’s not happy people who are grateful,
It’s grateful people who are happy.”
If we start saying ‘Thank you’ more consciously, our whole world will start feeling different.
When we say thank you for getting a coffee for instance, and we picture someone making the coffee, putting a little milk jar on the side, a cookie on a plate, and then that person bringing it over to us, that ‘thank you’ will have a whole different meaning. We won’t take it for granted anymore, we will realize someone took an effort to serve us, and we’ll be able to put more, and heartfelt, gratitude into our words. Now, we will really mean it and feel it, when we say ‘thank you’.
Another example is, when a friend is listening to your story, and you take into account the time they took to come over, the time to be there for you, and the effort to actually listen to you, again, you will feel a lot more gratitude while saying ‘thank you for being here’.
The more we make the effort to look, and see, what is happening around us, the more we will find things to be grateful for, lots of things. From very small gestures, to very big things that may even change your whole world.
It’s a matter of looking for the good in people, in situations.
Being able to change your whole world, just by looking at it from a perspective of gratitude, is one of the many things our wonderful teacher dr. Wayne W. Dyer taught us. One of his very famous sayings is:
“When you change,
the way you look at things,
the things you look at,
change.”
And that is so true!
Choose to look at your world from a different point of view.
Choose to look at it from this beautiful angle of gratitude.
We take so much for granted, we are so quick to criticize, we’re always looking for something more, something ‘better’, …
But when we choose to start feeding this thought* of gratitude, this thought of believing we have so much to be grateful for, we will start developing this feeling of gratitude, and it will become a habit to look at things from a place of feeling grateful.
And ‘suddenly’ we’ll feel luckier, happier, richer, more loved, … we will be content.
The 14th Dalai Lama** says this beautifully:
“When you are discontent,
you always want more, more, more.
Your desire can never be satisfied.
But when you practice contentment,
you can say to yourself,
“Oh yes, I already have everything I really need.”
To stop always wanting more, to stop thinking we’re entitled to it all, will lead us to feeling contentment, and to feeling ‘having enough’.
That feeling will lead us to being satisfied with our lives.
And being satisfied leads us to being happy and content.
Isn’t that what we, ultimately, all want? Living a happy life?
I think it’s very rewarding and heartwarming, to look at what you have, and feel grateful and content about it.
The alternative is: never feeling satisfied with what you have, and constantly be looking for things that, hopefully, will bring you happiness. But that is the wrong approach, as you’ll never have enough when you are not looking from a place of gratitude.
Brené Brown*** found overwhelming evidence, that gratitude is good for us on every level: physical, emotional and mental. She found results of different studies, that gratitude is correlated with better sleep, increased creativity, increased decision-making skills decreased entitlement, decreased hostility and aggression, decreased blood pressure, ….
When I was reading in The Atlas of the Heart*** the quote from Professor of Psychology of California, Davis and editor in chief of ‘The Journal of Positive Psychology’ Emmons, all the pieces of the puzzle clicked. Our emotional system likes newness, but the positive emotion of having something new, wears off quickly, we adapt to this new life easily. So, we always want something new.
But with gratitude, we appreciate the value of what we have, we are more conscious about it, we are less likely to take it for granted. The feeling of contentment lasts.
“… Instead of adapting to goodness,
we celebrate goodness….
With gratitude
we become greater participants in our lives,
as opposed to spectators.”
As I have written in many of my articles, you can consciously steer your thoughts*, and the quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your feelings.
When you practice gratitude daily, it will become your way of looking at the world.
It will become your habit to start feeling happy and content in life.
It will become your habit to be living a healthy and fulfilled life.
Create a gratitude practice that works for you, and do it daily.
That way it will become a habit, a new connection in your brain, it will become your new modus operandi.
Start your day with saying ‘Thank you!’ Even the very fact of waking up, of having a roof over your head, of having food on the table, may seem normal to you. But it isn’t for everyone. So, it’s already something to be grateful for.
Write down**** in the evening what was good today, write down what put a smile on your lips, what warmed your heart today. The fact of going back to that positive moment, writing it down, pondering it for a moment, reliving this warm feeling, makes you feel grateful, content, happy, loved.
Practice gratitude while meditating.
Be very conscious about thanking people, feel grateful when you thank them.
Look around you and notice nice gestures, nice people, … say thank you for having them in your life.
The more you look for positive things, the more you will find them.
Doing this daily, will make sure it becomes your new way of being, your new way of seeing the world. You will become your new you, your Highest Self.
Dr. Wayne Dyer’s says in his book ‘Happiness is the way*****’:
“When you’re looking for love, it will always elude you.
When you’re looking for happiness, it will always elude you.
When you become those things, however, they’re just there.
You don’t have them, they have you.”
Once you’ve been practicing gratitude for a while, you will fully understand.
Thank you all for reading me and for supporting me on Medium! If you want unlimited access to all of my articles and many other authors, you can become a Medium Member and you’ll be supporting me and all the other authors. Many, many thanks to you all!!!
Katrien
*”Which Thoughts Are You Feeding?” by Katrien Degraeve.
**Quote from the 14th Dalai Lama in Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown.
***”Atlas of the Heart” by Brené Brown.
****”Sleep: ‘Pure Bliss’ or ‘Waste of Time’? by Katrien Degraeve.
*****”Happiness Is The Way” by dr. W. Wayne Dyer.