A life of gratitude is a life worth living! Gratitude can be likened to a box filled with gifts and valuable items. The only way to them actually is to open the box.
The aura that gratitude brings is great and second to none, it tries to attract everything good to it, and carry it where ever it goes.
It is an emotion that reflects other kinds of positive emotions when expressed. Such emotions are happiness, thankfulness, appreciation, optimism and more, and they can improve our lives in its entire ramification.
However, these days, it is easier to be ungrateful for what we’ve lost or what we can’t have than being appreciative of the little we have.
Why? People normally forget that life isn’t all about what we get but making good use of what we already have.
“Be thankful for what you have, you will end up having more.” Oprah Winfrey
A grateful heart attracts people and positivity to it, irrespective of where it was expressed, and this can help bring success to you rather and you looking for success.
And, also a life of gratitude doesn’t only attract success but increases success. Gratitude can make you successful through these 9 practices.
- Learn to appreciate
One of the ways gratitude can make you successful is by appreciating people that matters.
When you want to make progress and achieve better, then you have to lay the foundation of gratitude because that is what births appreciation.
When you appreciate your employees, it will make them input more effort in whatever thing they do, because employee’s satisfaction and happiness can make coming to work and carrying out tasks enjoyable.
Also, when you are grateful for what you have accomplished, it can encourage you to appreciate your effort and be more success-focused.
Generally, being grateful and appreciating others can lead to positive energy, determination, and focus in your career, academic, and in every other aspect of your life, leading to progress.
- Recognize the effort of others
Another way gratitude can be practiced is by recognizing our effort and that of others.
It improves one’s work performance, and whether you are an employer and an employee, it is very essential to exhibit this trait for success.
Recognizing an employee’s effort can be a way an employer can show his/her gratitude, but this is one place most employers fail.
An employee’s satisfaction most times, doesn’t come from what he/she has done but from being appreciated for it.
It simply means that their efforts were recognized, and that can make them put in more effort which will lead to better work output and the growth of the company.
Also, know that recognizing people’s efforts goes beyond career and work.
- See success in your failures
One of the things that gratitude does is that it shifts our focus from the negative sides to the positive ones.
In as much as it helps s us to recognize our failures and challenges, it doesn’t limit or leave us there.
It makes us see the challenges as a stepping stone to success and this is why grateful people are optimistic.
They see life from a different perspective that no one else does, and that will make such a person to move forward and not restricted by the experiences of the past.
Gratitude can also help your career when you starting seeing things from the positive point of view because it will make you grateful not only when things are going well but also for the failures as the experiences will help you to grow and take certain risks.
Although gratitude cannot eliminate risk, it will help to push you through it.
- Live a life of gratitude
Living a life of gratitude doesn’t just create those happy scenes in our lives but can help a lot in combating stress, improving our mood, and makes us generally lively.
Businesses are not the only things that need to be successful; our lives can be successful as well when we practice gratitude, be it the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual aspect.
Gratitude inspires us and makes us happy; it produces good emotions and energy, makes relationships stronger and improves our health.
It changes our lives from the inside out and the result is felt not just within but extends to others around us.
When your life becomes better and successful with gratitude, every other success can follow
- Allow it overtake your fear
Gratitude overtakes fear. Fear and self-doubts are rivals for success.
So, if you want to be successful, then you have to, first of all, eliminate them from your life, because they are one of the negative factors that can weigh you down.
Gratitude helps us to recognize our fears and challenges, as we have already said but makes us focus more on the positivity, presence, and the future.
It helps to shed off the negativity on our path and replace them with a positive mindset and courage.
This will give you the belief that there is always one thing to be thankful for and better things to be hopeful for.
- Focus at the good side of life
One of the things that gratitude can do is to improve optimism, and this comes with hope and confidence in the things you do.
A grateful heart is optimistic and it is one of the traits that can produce positive energy in the workplace, and anyone would rather work with someone appreciative than with one who complains about everything even when it doesn’t matter.
Optimism is all about positive thought and being successful is all about positivity because it will encourage thinking wider and set better and higher goals.
Being optimistic will also help you to move forward, regardless of the setbacks you’ve encountered, the belief that the future holds something brighter is one way you can live a successful life.
- Live a life that encourages commitment
Most of the time, commitment comes from gratitude. If we are not grateful for what people have done for us, they may not be committed to doing more.
One can be dedicated to working whether he/she is being appreciated or not, but appreciation has a way of birthing commitment.
This doesn’t only concern our career aspect of lives, it affects other parts as well. When someone is appreciated, they can stay committed to you professionally and otherwise.
Being appreciative can also make one committed in their activities in the church, commit more time in their studies, there are even financial and talent commitment.
So, when you live a life that encourages commitment through gratitude, then there is a possibility to be a success.
- Meditate on self-gratitude for self-esteem
There has to be one thing that you are grateful for, focus your mind on it and meditate, as it has shown that self-gratitude leads to self-esteem or improve it.
You may never know the effect of low self-esteem until you have one. As a matter of fact, it makes one lose focus since can’t believe in yourself.
Again, it becomes difficult to believe in what you do since you can’t believe yourself.
Self-gratitude makes you appreciate yourself and feel better, instead of comparing yourself with others. Compromise can easily lead to envy and loss of interest in yourself, which will yield failure.
When you are grateful, you are happy for the good times in your life. That alone portrays a positive self-image and gives you reasons to be better.
- Build your confidence with gratitude
Building our confidence is one of the ways that we can practice gratitude in order to live a life of success.
When you are not confident in what you do, your success rate will start diminishing.
Gratitude plays an important role in building your confidence, as it comes with believing in what you do and in accomplishing it.
So when you live a life of gratefulness, you are either boosting your confidence or someone else’s.
When you show your employees that you appreciate them, it can make them have confidence in what they do, which will increase input and productivity.
When you appreciate your child for her painting of you, she is likely to have that confidence to do more and even make it better.
So, whether the gratitude is for you or others, it surely helps in building the confidence of the person concerned.
Conclusion
Gratitude should be a habit for you to practice always. Even if it doesn’t come naturally, learn it and develop it within you.
And when you have it, let it show through your expression, so that the impact can be felt by those around you, “Feeling grateful and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” William Arthur Ward
