How Much Will You Pay Just to Be Happy? 

Let’s revisit an age-old secret. There’s one simple way to experience happiness over an extended period of time — and even every day. It’s within your power, and the way to do it is to simply be grateful.

Has this happened to you, where a small “thank you” went a long way? Did you also notice that being frequently thankful improves your day? Now take it a notch higher and you’d find that practicing gratitude daily can transform your life.

We used to believe that happiness brings us gratitude, but actually, it’s the other way around. It’s gratitude that brings us happiness. Gratitude has that power.

How Does Gratitude Enhance Happiness?

Gratitude helps us snap out of our default way of thinking. Because we tend to think negatively and we naturally magnify things to complain about, consciously bringing our mind to a state of gratitude will help us see positive things that we initially overlooked. 

When you’re constantly thankful — even for the smallest things — it trains your brain to think positively. It literally switches the brain to a positive mode. When you’re positive, you exude that energy, and this positive energy that you exude will attract more things to be thankful for.

Devani Alderson (entrepreneur, co-founder of iCreateDaily) said, “Gratitude creates a positive gravitational field, and is what anchors and attracts the good to the orbit of your life.” Deepak Chopra (alternative medicine, New Age movement advocate) also expressed the same principle, “Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe.”

Why Is Gratitude Important For Our Overall Well-Being?

Gratitude comes from love and love is the greatest force of life. There are two ways to look at things in your life: to appreciate or depreciate their value. When you complain and whine about the things that show up in your life, you depreciate it. You resent it because it’s not big enough or shiny enough, it’s not the color you want, or it’s not what you really wanted in the first place. Resentment, fault finding, complaining: these block you from the flow. They separate you from love. Resentment reinforces the idea that you’re separate from the universe and it’s not giving you enough.

Inversely, to appreciate is to be grateful for anything that shows up in your life. Dr. Wayne Dyer (psychologist, self-help author, motivational speaker) defines gratitude as “the complete and full response of the heart to everything in the universe.” Gratitude reverses or stops the feeling of separateness from what shows up. Expressing gratitude with regular affirmations keeps the channel clear between you and The Source. 

When you express gratitude for everything, you open up channels for more goodness to come. Resentful people get less of the good in life because their resentment is actually what blocks it. When they receive something, their instant response is often: 

• “It’s not enough.”
• "Somebody else got something that's better."
• "It's not the right shade. It's not the right size."
• "It showed up too late. I should have gotten it yesterday."

It’s just an endless feeling of not happy.

What Can You Do?

Start cultivating the attitude of flow, of permitting, of allowing things to continue to grow in you because gratitude is love. The difficult part is that we also have to be grateful for what doesn't show up. We have to learn to be grateful for what we don't have, for the suffering that we're going through, and the experience of lack or scarcity in our life.  Everything in the physical reality has its opposite. Until we learn how to be grateful for the bad things, we can’t really understand true gratitude.

Learn to be thankful for every experience in your life (both good and bad), especially the bad ones, because the only other option is to be resentful. Resentment is too high a price to pay. You risk happiness by being resentful.

Dr. Dyer says that you're not going to get it ALL in life because you ARE it all already. All the elements that make your life complete are in you. You already have everything you need to be successful, to have love, and to have peace. You don't need one thing more. Anything else that shows up is just a bonus from the universe.

What Are the Benefits of Gratitude?

Here are several of the scientifically proven benefits of living a life of gratitude. 

• It shields you from negativity
• Makes you at least 25% happier
• Rewires your brain and improves psychological health
• Eliminates stress
• Heals and improves physical health
• Improves sleep
• Boosts self-esteem and performance
• Enhances the law of attraction
• Improves relationships
• Enhances empathy and reduces aggression)
• Increases mental strength

Stop the mental habit of negativity and resentment. Replace it with gratitude and you’ll be happier.

You will truly see your life transform.

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**REFERENCES:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201504/7-scientifically-proven-benefits-gratitude 

https://www.happierhuman.com/benefits-of-gratitude/