Gratitude -> Happiness

A grateful heart is a happy heart. You hear it or read about it every once in a while, but how often have you pondered it and tried putting it into practice? Until recently, I hadn't. However, I was reading up on gratitude and came across some great articles on how gratitude can make you happy and how gratitude leads to happiness that I really liked and that I have been reflecting on quite a bit recently. I've even been trying to practice a bit more gratitude about things lately to see the effects and have been a bit surprised. I still have to deal with the same things that I have been dealing with, both greater difficulties and smaller ones, but I find that I am actually a lot happier about things.

Case in point: Every morning one of my co-workers and I share the usual pleasantries of "how are you this morning" and "how was your evening/weekend" for which I usually try to remain upbeat. However, especially in the last week or so I've found that I don't really have to try to remain upbeat about my response. Thinking back on the evenings I am usually genuinely content if not outright happy about how things went. As far as I can tell I still do the same dishes in the evening that I was doing before. I still have the same sense of tiredness that I had before. However, I'm just more happy about them.

Now, I know that not everyone wants to be bubbling with happiness all the time, but I'd very strongly suggest you give it a try. The first article I mentioned has some great reasons for why you should try gratitude. After you've read that and are convinced to give it a try, also read the second. I loved how Steve talked about two levels of gratitude.