22 things God taught me about Gratitude

Photo by Kawin Harasai on Unsplash

HERE below is a developed list of attributes God gave me to understand gratitude better:

1.        There is therapy in work – don’t resent it. Find the purpose in work. It’s good for us. It’s good to be grateful for the work we’ve been given.

2.        Gratitude is a process – it’s not as simple as it sounds, which is why I have committed to finding 10,000 reasons for my heart to find why God is good.

3.        Expectations are important in the process of gratitude – the higher the expectations, the more difficult the process of gratitude. Humility works with low expectations, of others especially.

4.        Grief’s burden is lightened by gratitude – gratitude is a key practice to be nurtured from as early in the grief process as possible. Particularly regarding finding ways to serve. Serving puts our mental emphases on others in a season (of grief) where there is already plenty of mental emphasis on the things we’re dealing with. Emphasis on others is light relief. Serving others grows us in many different ways.

5.        Gratitude sown reaps patience. Powerful, is that not? From patience comes a whole heap of other virtue.

6.        It simply must become a habit – making a list of 100 things per day means I am forced to look for items to be grateful about. Engaging in the practice for 100 days facilitates the formation of a habit.

7.        Fear creeps in insidiously – the good thing is the inbuilt gratitude monitor puts out early alerts. Check what the fear is about. Attend to it, then get back on with the gratitude list.

8.        10,000 Reasons is forcing me to look, to see, to discover, to find – there comes to be a craving to discover. A positive compulsion.

9.        Gratitude helps me realise life’s a challenge for all people – that life for every single person is a faith journey. Life is easy for nobody.

10.   Gratitude alleviates negative emotions – each person has anxieties to manage and emotions to contain and express.

11.   Seeing failure through a different lens – I’m glad of my failures, because without them I wouldn’t have seen my responses.

12.   Being grateful works best when it’s stimulated – it helps if we do something or interact with someone, which causes us to be grateful.

13.   Gratitude is forward-focused – we don’t need to look back anymore if I don’t want to.

14.   Waiting invites patience – delays are good. They train us in waiting, and in considering what we can do or think about while we wait, even to practice stillness and contemplation.

15.   The power of ONE – in a world in love with numbers, gratitude is perfectly content in anonymity. It needs to prove nothing to nobody.

16.   An antidote to frustration is gratitude – it is never good being overwhelmed on a regular basis. The more gratitude, the less frustration.

17.   Busyness facilitates frustration – when efficiency blurs into busyness, frustration is never too far away.

18.   Patience reminds us to slow down – this fruit of the Spirit causes us to do what we need to do to remain grateful; to slow down and remain under control.

19.   Gratitude is the antidote to many ills – start in this positive area and realise many spinoffs, including better mental health outcomes.

20.   Gratitude wards against worry – it seems impossible to be worried and grateful at the same time.

21.   Gratitude rewires the brain appreciatively – especially through the practice of finding 100 things per day to be grateful for.

22.   Realising that to seek is to take the journey forward positively – to capture the present and keep looking in the recent past through reflection for anything to appreciate propels the present positively.