The charm of being grateful

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”, said Albert Einstein. If we live with the latter perspective, we develop an attitude of appreciation, being thankful, mindful, and grateful, where our life will be filled with calmness and modesty that not only make you healthier but will also spark the life of those around you with inspiration, optimism, love and respect.

Gratitude is a behaviour that more people should start practising in their lives in order to fill their auras around them with the charming vibrations of gratitude because of its many benefits and importance that are reflected in the personality of the individual and those around them.

We should not forget the benefits of gratitude on the physical health of the human being. These positive feelings benefit our state of mind greatly. Gratitude has an excellent effect on our immune system, which will maintain the health of human organs such as heart, for example, and it also improves sleeping, as reported in the magazine of Psychosomatic Research in 2009. Another benefit for gratitude is that it reduces the feeling of loneliness, due to the fact that a grateful person has a positive and social personality, which increases their social contact with others.

Gratitude simply means being thankful when you receive a gift or when a simple positive thing happens in your day, and it is not conditional that it must be of a huge material value. People could be sometimes satisfied with gratitude for having woken up in the morning to start a new day full of new achievements in their life. There are even simpler things that you can be grateful for, such as being able to prepare a delicious cup of coffee that gives you vitality and refreshment to start your new day actively, or even reading a page from a book you like that may enlighten your insight, increase your positiveness, and enrich your intellectual state of mind.

Everything we do daily deserves gratitude, even if it is something not so positive, such as making mistakes. Making mistakes provides important opportunities for learning, acquiring new skills, and developing oneself. Guilt should not be exaggerated when you make a mistake. Rather, it should be replaced by gratitude and self-development, in addition to self-esteem that you tried hard to achieve the best. One of the most important personality traits people should learn is developing gratitude (how to appreciate, respect, and praise), but when and how do we express gratitude.

Loss is one of the most important influences that drive us to long for gratitude. Back to Covid-19, you contract the virus, you start to be patient — a patient patient, and as time progresses, the situation becomes worse or unbearable and you will then remember how it was before you contracted the virus. You want again to be able to taste your favourite foods filled with delicious flavours, you now cannot wait for the moment when you recover from the virus, and your sense of taste can return. Here lies the importance of gratitude, which reminds us of the value of the things we possess, taken for granted, no matter how small or large, simple or complicated. We should always remember not to be in a deep slumber without taking the time to APPRECIATE the blessings that could be taken away from us in a jiffy!

Perspectives may differ from person to person. Some may think that the sense of hearing is more important than taste, but the others believe that mental health is more important than taste and hearing, while a third group believes that being alive is more important than other things. Perspectives may differ, but the meaning of sensing the importance of things is the same which is feeling the meaning of “gratitude” that develops the inner positive side of our souls.

There are many ways through which you can express your gratitude, including writing! Take a pen and paper, try to write down 10 things that you are grateful for that you experienced today, just like taking a shower or a hot bath after a long and tiring day, feeling how that warm water helps you get rid of cramps and fatigue in your muscles. Let’s take winter clothes as a second example, you should be grateful for being able to afford wearing warm woolen clothes that can protect your skin, which may be affected by the cold weather, causing you dryness, inflammation and itching. Affording those clothes should make you grateful, remembering those who cannot have them elsewhere.

You can also express your gratitude by talking! Try to tell your friends how grateful you are for their presence in your life, sending them positive messages that make them and you happy. Get yourself used to positive talk, and if you are not used to that, you can record your voice using your mobile phone saying some of the things you are grateful for. Gratitude stimulates positive thinking and beautiful emotions which give you energy to overcome the bumps of life that may reflect on your feelings in a negative way.

One of the most loved ways for some people to express their gratitude is by drawing. Drawing and expressing oneself in colours is an exceptional world that displays deep meanings embedded in the lines and colours that merge together to form an artistic painting that reflects human feelings. For example, some hanging panels filled with lively colours like yellow and blue give us an energy filled with vitality and gratitude.

Gratitude should not be taken as a temporary act that a person does in a specific period, but should be adopted as an effective routine of life. If we go back to the biographies of successful personalities, we will find that they always relied on a sense of gratitude to live their lives. John F Kennedy said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”