Being grateful is not some new phenomenon to most of us. We all learn from a very young age to be grateful, to say thank you and count our blessings. But have you ever thought of gratitude as a power you have? Have you ever thought that gratitude can be a practice that enables you to strengthen your resilience, your health, your mind and your quality of life?

Here’s a deeper way to think about gratitude and its benefits – and a different way to practice it and ignite it daily so you train your brain to make it a habit.

A deeper way to think about gratitude

There has been a great deal of research in neuroscience, psychology, neurobiology, and spirituality that continue to show us how much power gratitude has on our health and our life. But this power comes from more than just saying thank you or remembering to be grateful once in a while. It comes from truly feeling gratitude deliberately as a practice daily!

Gratitude is an energy and a power that we can tap into at any time

• It comes from being grateful not only for the positives in our lives but also for the difficulties that enable us to build our resilience and explore new opportunities to be grateful for.
• It comes from being grateful for what we take for granted such as the miracles within us and around us making it possible to experience life.
• It comes from making gratitude a conscious practice daily so we intentionally acknowledge the countless things we can be thankful for everyday

Making gratitude a part of your mindset

When gratitude becomes part of your daily practice, it becomes part of your mindset. You can use it in a powerful way to retrain your brain to focus on gratitude in three ways:

• Make it a practice to focus on being grateful on what is, what you have and what you’ve overcome – This replaces any thoughts or feelings about what is not, what you resent and what feels missing.
• Become more aware of the abundance within you and the endless possibilities and resources available all around you and it will replace any feeling of lack or scarcity.
• Be grateful for your future and visualize your vision as if it’s already here. Feel the gratitude of living it. This is a great way to build your inner trust, intuition and patience.

By creating such focus, you build a powerful mindset loaded with the energy that aligns with your desires which then in turn ignites your power to take the action you need to achieve the vision you want.

Scientific evidence of the benefits of gratitude

Studies and research in gratitude have found the power of gratitude to have a great deal of benefits beyond what was known:

• Reduces stress and anxiety
• Helps up heal and improves overall health
• Strengthens our emotions and resilience
• Increases happiness, abundance and positive energy
• Reignites our inspiration and reconnects us to our heart
• Reconnects us to feeling our vision for the future
• Physically changes the structure of our brain
• Resets our mindset to focus on positivity and abundance

When we continually access that feeling of gratitude for the many things we have, we are affirming that first we can always find goodness in our life – without things having to be perfect – and second that we are acknowledging there is an abundant source from where that goodness comes.

How to ignite the power of gratitude

Access the deeper feeling of gratitude daily, and make it part of a daily meditation practice. You will see that the more you practice, the more it will grow and unfold exponentially. You will find that authentic happiness surfaces from within and with time you will start to feel freer and lighter inside. You will find that your stress and anxiety gets reduced, fear starts to disappear, negative emotions will dissipate, and your resiliency and coping mechanism will continue to increase.

As you continue to intentionally focus on gratitude you will no longer need to fight to be strong, you just become stronger, calmer, more patient, and wiser. Things will start to feel less difficult and more effortless.

So remember to make gratitude part of your daily practice. Access the endless things to be thankful for and watch how things start to change in your life!

Listen to this powerful video to get connected with all the things we can all be grateful for at all times!