5 Ways Practicing Gratitude Makes Your Life Better

I can’t believe it’s November! The school year is just flying by. Did you survive Halloween and the day after? It’s always fun to see all the students dressed up in their costumes! With November, we move into a month where we share we are most thankful for.

That’s why for the next three weeks I’ll be posting on gratitude. This week I’ll be sharing with you 5 ways that practicing gratitude will make your life better! And if you already practice gratitude regularly, these will be a great reminder for a why.

Increase Motivation

When we think back on what we are grateful for, our motivation increases. When we don’t spend enough time thinking about what’s going right, we lose our why. And when we lose our why, we think, “Why bother?” This decreases our motivation and productivity for anything we want to accomplish in our daily life, whether it be at work or at home.

Positive Attitude

Practicing gratitude will keep your attitude in a positive place more often. I am not talking about toxic positivity, I’m talking about sometimes, to quote Mama Odie, we need to “dig a little deeper.” It’s easy to dwell on things like, that lesson went poorly, none of my students understood it, and it was during an observation. A different way of looking at it could be, I am grateful that my students were respectful to each other during the whole lesson and that the observor can offer me some helpful feedback.

Self-Care

By reflecting on who or what you are thankful for, you are engaging in a form of self-care. Usually when thinking about who or what you are thankful for brings back the warm memories of that person or time, which promotes relaxation. This reduces stress and is good for overall mental well-being. Both reducing stress and taking care of our mental health are included when discussing self-care.

Shows Others You Care

Depending on the way you choose to practice gratitude, you are showing others you care about them. Sometimes the little thing you do for that person that shows you care will make their day. When reversed, I know it makes mine. Knowing you made someone’s day brighter, makes your day brighter, too! Amazing how that works.

Improves Overall Well-Being

When you add up all the benefits above, it’s a no-brainer, that practicing gratitude will improve your overall well-being! According to the dictionary, well-being is the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy. While it is impossible to be all those things all the time, we hope to be all those things more often than not. Practicing gratitude will help!

Conclusion

Just writing this post put a smile on my face. It makes me want to increase how often I reflect on what I am thankful for and how often I show others. I hope reading this post does the same for you because next week, I’ll be sharing how. Next week’s week post will be about practical ways to practice gratitude. I hope you’ll come back and check it out! And if you liked this post, with the holidays around the corner you may want to check out You Do You This Winter Break to make this your best Winter Break yet!