“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough” – Oprah Winfrey

Life isn’t always butterflies and rainbows. Sometimes life can be difficult, complicated and messy.

And, you don’t have the power to always control all the external factors to be exactly how you may want them to be in your life. However, you can choose your thoughts, feelings and words. You can choose your response or reaction to those external factors.

You have a choice when it comes to your perspective and you can decide which mindset you choose to navigate your experiences through, one of lack (fixed) or one of abundance (abundance).

Choose an Attitude of Gratitude.

It’s imperative to find and focus on the good. And allow yourself to soak up all the abundance and wonder life has to offer. It’s so much more fun than complaining and being negative all the time.

Practicing gratitude: Remember to be thankful when you wake up in the morning!

Research shows that practicing and expressing gratitude is associated with improvements to one’s mental well-being, as well as decreased stress and anxiety. Additionally, success in life starts with acknowledging what you already have.

Many successful people share a similar daily ritual that helps them achieve short-term and long-term success: making a list of what they are grateful for.

“What we focus on, what we put our attention on really determines how we feel about that particular day or our life in general,” states Arianna Huffington.

A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who wrote about their gratitude over a period of time showed greater signs of emotional well-being compared to people who wrote about negative or neutral life events.

Practicing gratitude trains your brain to feel more positive emotions, appreciate good experiences, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships; all of which contribute to improved mental health.

“Gratitude is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the more powerful it becomes. And being grateful doesn’t just make other people happy—it makes you happy, too! That’s because it focuses your attention on the positive things in your life, not the negative ones,” explains Oprah Winfrey.

When you begin to focus more on what really matters and choosing to see your reality from the lens of contentment. This allows you to eliminate unnecessary wants that could sabotage your vision and purpose. It might derail your pursuit of true happiness.

It may not feel natural at first to focus on appreciating what you already have, but by faithfully practicing the daily habits of gratitude, you’ll begin to change your conditioning and strengthen the gratitude muscle.

Bottomline: Always live in gratitude for what you have.

“Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” — Oprah Winfrey

References:

1. https://www.oprah.com/spirit/oprahs gratitude-journal-oprah-on-gratitude
2. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/16/how-arianna-huffington-tony-robbins-and-oprah-use-gratitude-to-succeed.html