Perception is the key component of gratitude. Gratitude is the key component to joy.
Category Archives: Gratitude
Wealth and Gratitude
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~ Epictetus
When we think of wealth and financial independence, the word and thoughts that usually come to mind is more…more money and financial assets, more big boy toys and larger estate homes. But according to most Stoics or philosophers, their insight is that once your essential needs are satisfied, the easiest way to create wealth and achieve financial independence is to want less.
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” ~ Epictetus
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Secret to a Long and Happy Life
On CNBC’s Make It, 107-year-old Shirley Hodes shares her secret to a long and happy life: Don’t wait for your dreams to come true.
Shirley Hodes, who celebrated her 107th birthday earlier this month in North Carolina, says, “Not everyone has their dreams come true.” If you want to be happy in life, especially as you age, “you must look at other things besides dreams.”
That philosophy means reorienting yourself towards finding joy in small things, in what you can control, and in wanting what you already have. It is about being grateful.
“You must be content with who you are and what you can expect of yourself. Find things that are satisfying,” Hodes says.
Cultivating this kind of happiness mindset requires effort. But the work can pay off: Positivity is linked to a longer and healthier life.
Here are top tips for staying happy as you get older.
- Think of yourself as fortunate and blessed. Be thankful for all the things and people currently in your life.
- Believe that tomorrow will be better than today.
- Focus less on what others have and more on the aspects of life you can feel grateful for. Don’t get swept up in jealousy or resentment,
- Find delight daily in the small things. I listened to books on tape, took walks, watched old movies on TV, and had a scoop of ice cream after dinner. Most importantly, family and friends.
Source: 107-year-old shares her secret to a long and happy life: Don’t wait for your dreams to come true https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/21/107-year-old-shares-her-secrets-to-happiness-as-you-age.html
The Story of Oprah Winfrey
“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey’s career has been almost impossibly successful. Oprah’s net worth of $2.6 billion also makes her the first African American female billionaire.
Defying the odds is nothing new to Oprah, who has been battling against adversity her whole life. Oprah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey.
Oprah Winfrey grew up in extreme poverty and was sexually abused by several people throughout her childhood. She bounced between living with her mother, father, and grandmother, and as a teenager, she frequently ran away from home. She became pregnant at age fourteen, but the infant died shortly after birth.
During her high school years, she began working at a local radio station. She worked her way through several media jobs, and eventually, she landed a job as a TV news anchor. But she was later fired from the position.
She didn’t allow one person’s opinion of her on-air suitability to stop her, however. She went on to create her own talk show and by the age of thirty-two, her show became a national hit. By the age of forty-one, she had a reported net worth of over $340 million.
Oprah has started her own magazine, radio show, and TV network and has coauthored five books. She’s even won an Academy Award. She’s started a multitude of charities to help people in need, including a leadership academy for girls in South Africa.
Oprah didn’t let her childhood or her former employer take away her power. A woman who was once teased because she was so poor, she wore potato sacks as dresses was named one of the world’s most powerful women by both CNN and Time. Statistically, her upbringing would have predicted a poor prognosis. But Oprah refused to be a statistic. She chose to define who she was going to be in life by not giving away her power.
Oprah’s story shows how important education, faith, and hard work are. She is a true believer that working towards your goals will take all your effort, but it will be worth it.
“Whatever someone did to you in the past has no power over the present. Only you give it power.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
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World Gratitude Day
Today is World Gratitude Day
World Gratitude Day is observed annually on September 21. to mark the importance of appreciating people and expressing gratitude.
World Gratitude Day is a reminder of the importance of expressing gratitude by thanking people and appreciating the things you have. It is a day aimed at realizing the importance of showing appreciation and gratitude for the people around us.
Gratitude promotes happiness by giving people more positive emotions and making them savor good experiences. Gratitude helps people savor good moments, appreciate life, deal more effectively with bad experiences, improve their health, and build more rewarding relationships.
A regular gratitude practice can make you healthier and lead to…
👉 Better mood
👉 Better sleep
👉 Lower blood pressure
👉 Improved immune function
Never regret a day in your life.
- Good days bring happiness,
- Bad days give experiences,
- The worst days give lessons, and the best days give memories.
- Every day is a unique chapter in your story, filled with valuable moments that shape your journey.
- Cherish them all, for they contribute to the beautiful tapestry of your life.
Gratitude is Powerful
Gratitude is powerful: not only does it feel good, it’s also been proven to increase your mental and physical well-being in myriad ways.
Gratitude is a powerful mindset that does far more than make you feel good; it can help you be your best self both mentally and physically, connect with others, and see the good in others and the world.
- Gratitude turns what little you have into abundance.
- Gratitude is so much more than saying thank you.
- Gratitude changes your perspective of your world.
Think of your mind like your digestive system — what you put into it impacts how you feel and think. When you flood your mind with a constant flow of worry, envy, resentment, and self-criticism (compounded by a barrage of news and social media) it negatively impacts your mental well-being.
Practicing gratitude is like exercise and a healthy diet for your mind. Researchers have shown that it can positively impact your mental and physical well-being
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Gratitude is important
“You can’t feel envious and grateful at the same time. They’re incompatible feelings, because if you’re grateful, you can’t resent someone for owning things you don’t.” ~ Dr. Robert Emmons
Gratitude is important because when you express gratitude, your brain releases dopamine and serotonin — two hormones that make you feel lighter and happier inside.
Have you ever noticed that when you are looking to buy a new phone or a jacket all of a sudden everyone around you has it? That’s because, consciously or unconsciously, whatever we are focused on is what we see. If we want to trigger gratitude in ourselves, we need to intentionally shift our focus to that which we are grateful for.
You experience gratitude when you shift your focus from what you don’t have to what you do, and when you take time to appreciate and be thankful for those who have contributed to the abundance in your life.
Nearly a decade of research by Dr. Robert Emmons — the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude — and others has found that people who have regular gratitude practices are healthier, happier, and have better relationships.
Further research suggests that gratitude is also key in helping individuals and teams persevere in challenging tasks.
Soutce: https://hbr.org/2020/10/use-gratitude-to-counter-stress-and-uncertainty
Viktor Frankl and the Search for Meaning in Life
“Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” ~ Viktor Frankl
As Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.” He developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning “reason” or “principle”).
While observing the brutality and degradation within the Nazi concentration camps during WWII, he theorized that those Jewish concentration camp prisoners who tended to survive the experience, were not those who were physically strong, but those who retained a sense of control over their environment, and had some meaning and purpose in their lives.
These prisoners with meaning and who retained a ’sense of control’ were more likely to survive the dehumanizing experience; he himself tried to recreate the manuscript of a book he had been writing before his capture.
“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except for one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” ~ Viktor Frankl
According to Frankl, meaning can be found through:
- “Experiencing reality by interacting authentically with the environment and with others,
- Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression, and
- Changing our attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that we cannot change.”
He observed:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.”
For Frankl, joy was an important byproduct of finding meaning in life. He points to studies where there is marked difference in life spans between “trained, tasked animals,” i.e., animals with a purpose, than “taskless, jobless animals.”
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
— Viktor Frankl | Man's Search for Meaning 📖 (@ViktorFranklll) March 7, 2023
In his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He concludes that “without meaning, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions.”
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” ~ Viktor Frankl
In “Man’s Search For Meaning”, he says for a person to be happy they need 3 things:
1. Someone to love (relationship).
2. Something to do (meaning and purpose).
3. Something to look forward to (vision and hope).
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Live Every Single Today
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ~ Apostle Paul, 2 Timothy 4:6-8
It’s important to live every single day without regret, with clear goals and with purpose
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative carer, wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. In it, she describes the five most common wishes she heard from her soon-to-depart clients.
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Stringently adhering to cultural norms at the expense of your own passions will result in disappointment and bitterness.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. Time is non-refundable so if you spend it working, then you can’t spend it doing more meaningful things.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. It is only by being open and honest about your thoughts and feelings can you form genuine bonds with other people.
- I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends. It is dispiriting to be disconnected from those who truly understand you and accept you as you are.
- I wish I had let myself be happier. The expectations and opinions of others should not prevent you from being happy with who you are. Moreover, happiness can be found in the journey, not just the destination, which you often never reach.
Another regret heard most often is:
I wish I’d taken better care of my health. Most people do not think about their health until they experience a health challenge. And at that point, we make promises to ourselves that if we get better we’ll do a better with our health and well-being. But, I t shouldn’t take a major health challenge to get us to prioritize and focus on our health, fitness and diet. Your body must be your major priority and should be cared for. Nourish it with healthy food, exercise it daily and get a sufficient amount of sleep. Small healthy habits every day will compound and make a big difference over the long-term.
Never give up on yourself
Life and how you live it everyday is a choice. It is your life. Choose consciously, choose wisely and choose honestly. Choose happiness and focus on what is good and positive. Always be grateful.
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Mindset of Building Wealth
Your mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation or circumstance. It means that what you believe about yourself impacts your success or failure or happiness or wealth.
Simply, your beliefs shape your mindset. Mindset is a collection of beliefs and thoughts. It is a way of thinking:
“Mindsets are those collection of beliefs and thoughts that make up the mental attitude, inclination, habit or disposition that predetermines a person’s interpretations and responses to events, circumstances and situations.”
According to Stanford psychologist and best selling author Dr. Carol Dweck, your beliefs play a pivotal role in what you want and whether you achieve it. Dweck has found that it is your mindset that plays a significant role in determining achievement and success.
Mindsets can influence how people behave in a wide range of situations in life. For example, as people encounter different situations, their mind triggers a specific mindset that then directly impacts their behavior in that situation.
Your mindset plays a critical role in how you cope with life’s challenges. With a positive growth mindset, adults are more likely to persevere in the face of setbacks. Instead of throwing in the towel, adults with a positive growth mindset view it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
In short, your mindset not only impacts how you perceive the world around you, but also how you see and believe in yourself and your abilities.
Gratitude Mindset
It’s important to be grateful for everything you have in life. For having a roof over your head, a paying job, a family, a good supply of food and water. Simply, gratitude is the “affirmation of goodness”.
Gratitude is a super power! It has been scientifically proven to be good for your health, your well-being, your building wealth, and your relationships.
Psychology research has demonstrated that practicing gratitude is good for improving your health, your well-being, your building wealth, and your relationships.
We often forget to be thankful for what we have…have a mindset and attitude of gratitude.
If you can be grateful for what you have, you won’t take anything or anyone for granted in your life, and you’ll be wealthier and happier in the long run.
Your mindsets have a lot to do with self-confidence, self-esteem as well as self-development and the desire for self-improvement and being grateful.
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