I have understood something extremely important recently. One of the most important things in life is the ability to understand that your life already is full of amazing and incredible things that make you a different a successful person.
Those things are everywhere in your life, and they are even more importantly enrich and make your life better, but simply because you have had them already and you have accepted them as a new status quo of your life, you don’t treasure them enough.
It can seem very hard and very crazy to be thankful for things that you already have because our mind is made up for constant progress and constant want to move forward. That is why even thinking about settling down and just being thankful can be a hard and exhausting task.
Why is it so important? Because we all have our ups and downs in life. Sometimes, especially during the down, we feel that we lost everything and there is no coming back, but in reality, if you look in the grand scheme of things, the negative parts of our life are minimal when we look at the long term and the number of things that do and can happen during that time.
But when we struggle the most and we can not find anything to cheer us up, that is when really being thankful and appreciative of the small things, such as being healthy or having a family that you can share some things with, is truly a blessing that you can appreciate and feel better about.
Sometimes the failure at work or a bad project can ruin your mood, but just thinking about the number of successful projects that you had really does change the way you feel and the way you think about other things.
But either way, I have found that there are tricks to being thankful and appreciative of life no matter how hard it can be.
Tricks to happiness
I link the appreciation of life to happiness because most of the time, just realising the number of things you can be thankful for increases happiness and well-being.
So the first exercise involves you sitting down with a recording device of your choice, pen and paper or a laptop, and writing down the first 10 things that somehow made you feel good, or you are proud of.
I always start things with the basic 10. The 10 things such as the ability to talk and walk and just being healthy.
Put the 10 things that you can think about just from the top of your mind.
After I have written this 10 or some other 10 that I can think of at the time, I put my brain into a different state of mind where I can think and analyse everything from the perspective of how awesome it is and how awesome it has been for me.
I used to really undervalue things, but after this exercise, I understand the little things that really do matter.
The second trick and exercise that can really make you thankful for your life is more reading and more watching of smart and interesting books and movies.
Most of the time, especially when you are happy, you tend to ignore the meaningful truths that books contain. Some people ignore sad books and movies altogether because they make you think and make you uncomfortable, but I think that in some cases, it is incredibly important to see other’s peoples stories and circumstances to understand your own and to start treating your life the way that it deserved to be treated. With respect and happiness.
These are the tricks that I use whenever I need to step aside from my high roles or whenever I find myself in the negative part of my life.
Try it and tell me if it worked. We all can be lonely, and understanding that it is normal and that there are things you can do to make yourself better are extremely important.
Klim Y
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