How to create a life you’ll love with daily gratitude.
Did you know that a simple gratitude practice can rewire your brain for happiness, transform your health, relationships, and bring you closer to your goals?
Sounds too good to be true? Trust me, it works - and I’ve got the science to prove it!
Keep reading to find out how you can leverage the life-changing power of gratitude to transform your mindset and build a life you’ll absolutely love.
You are what you (repeatedly) think
Your life is an expression of your thoughts. Yep - you quite literally are what you think! Everything you’ve ever done or created started as a thought.
But let’s dig a bit deeper.
Your thoughts aren’t fully yours. They are affected by your subconscious programming - the beliefs about yourself and the world that were wired into you since childhood, affected by the things your parents used to do and say, and the social and cultural norms that ruled your life.
While it’s no surprise that the external world shapes our internal beliefs, it’s important to notice when those beliefs no longer serve our growth.
Your thoughts, together with your subconscious mind, create a belief system that runs like a computer programme in your head, shaping your thinking, actions and, as a result, your life.
If you’ve been repeating a pattern that keeps you stuck or attracting situations you don’t want, chances are your belief system is to blame.
Changing your life starts with changing your belief system.
But there’s more!
Your energy creates your reality
We are all energetic beings living in a vibrational Universe. Our bodies, all matter, are made of atoms that vibrate at a certain frequency. If we dig deeper and look into string theory, we’ll learn that everything in the universe is made out of one-dimensional, vibrating strings - which means that the entire Universe, and us with it, vibrates.
Our thoughts and emotions also have a vibration and a certain frequency that comes with it.
This vibrational frequency represents your energetic ‘quality’; if your thoughts and energy are wired towards positivity, joy and kindness, you’re more likely to attract the same positive energy and with it people, situations, and opportunities.
Likewise, if you lean towards the negative you most likely find yourself, more often than not, attracting negative outcomes.
What we attract into our life is the product of our vibration.
Reprogramming your mind for joy
This means that if you want to create a beautiful, abundant reality for yourself, you have to start by shifting your vibration to a more empowered, high-vibe state.
Practising gratitude allows you to do both - reprogramme your beliefs and raise your vibration!
Science-backed benefits of gratitude
I wasn’t exaggerating when I said practising gratitude has the power to change your life.
Let’s start with the science behind it:
Gratitude boosts happiness and cancels out fear.
It boosts serotonin and activates the production of dopamine, the ‘feel good’ neurochemicals that help enhance your mood and overall well-being. And since gratitude helps regulate stress hormones, it’s also key in reducing fear and anxiety.
Practising daily gratitude can, quite literally, change your brain and rewire it for more joy.
This is possible thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain's natural ability to change and adapt as you learn new skills, or practice new beliefs. Gratitude helps shift your mindset from negative to positive, creating new neural pathways that ‘attune’ your brain for more joy!
It also improves sleep (calm, positive thoughts = better sleep), and the immune system as a whole.
This is key because the better we feel emotionally and physically, the more likely we are to take inspired action towards our goals and dreams.
And if this wasn’t enough…your daily gratitude practice helps you live longer as it lowers the risk of heart disease!
But don’t just take my word for it, there’s been studies done on this.
Gratitude is proven to make you a better leader.
Fellow entrepreneurs, managers, and decision-makers - this one’s for you!
Leading from a place of kindness and empathy helps create a beautiful, safe space where everyone feels cared for and appreciated. The outdated belief that a good leader must be feared to be respected is the product of an unhealed ego, disguising insecurities as ill-projected self-confidence.
True, conscious leadership is rooted in a sense of compassion, and gratitude helps awaken it.
Empathy, the byproduct of gratitude, helps you connect with your team on a personal level rather than focusing purely on performance. It translates into higher job retention, and better quality of work (working for a compassionate, empathetic leader is certainly more fulfilling than a narcissistic boss!).
It builds stronger, inspired teams and unleashes a free flow of creativity as no one is afraid to speak up.
Ultimately, your kindness comes back to you multiplied and reflects well on you as a leader.
Combine this with another benefit of gratitude: increased productivity, better decision-making skills and better client loyalty (more research on this here), and you might just snag that long-awaited promotion.
Changing your life with gratitude
Gratitude challenges your negative beliefs and helps re-wire your brain for happiness. It transforms your thoughts to a higher vibration, which makes you a vibrational match for the beautiful, joyful reality you want to create.
It also helps you let go of the ‘autopilot’ mentality and create your reality more consciously.
Let me explain.
The reason you’re anxious or stressed is that you’re either worried about the future or stuck in the past.
By magnifying positive emotions with gratitude, you shift the focus to the present moment - the only place you can control!
Gratitude helps you take your power back.
Most importantly, gratitude increases your sense of happiness, and with it, creates more abundance in life.
Living from a place of joy improves your relationships, as you start showing up in a better way, and connect with people on a deeper level. Who wouldn’t want to be around someone who’s always happy?
When you feel joyful, you start drawing people to yourself like a magnet. Not only that, you’re more likely to take inspired action towards your goals and create a positive change.
Think of happiness as the fuel that takes you from where you are to where you want to be, and gratitude - the tank where happiness is stored.
‘Negative’ emotions pave the path toward joy
Does this mean that the only way to transform your life is to feel positive all the time?
Absolutely not!
Not only would this be impossible; all emotions are beautiful, even the ones we deem ‘negative’, as they ultimately show us what we need to heal.
Our emotions are great teachers, showing us what works and what doesn’t.
The benefit of gratitude is that it helps you contextualise your ‘negative’ thoughts so that they no longer run the show and stop you from moving forward.
How to practice daily gratitude
Ok, so how do we practice gratitude? The best way to start is… well, from the beginning - in the morning, soon after you wake up.
There’s actual science behind this. When you wake up, your brain switches from deep-sleep delta waves to theta (a daydreamy sort of state that produces the same type of brain waves as meditation), before moving to calm and relaxed alpha waves.
By harvesting the power of the theta and alpha state, you get to tap into your subconscious mind and inject it with positivity first thing in the morning!
Change your life with these simple but powerful gratitude practices:
Focus on the good. Our brains are naturally wired towards negativity. It’s a survival tactic that kept us alive when "danger" meant something with sharp teeth… But now, in the jungle of modern life, the negativity bias doesn’t always work in our favour.
To reverse this cultivate and focus on the good things in life, no matter how big or small. This way you re-train your brain to focus on the positive and create more daily joy.Gratitude in Challenges. Life sucks. Or does it? When the going gets tough, gratitude helps reframe our perspective. Let’s flip the script and become grateful for the challenges life throws our way. They are often blessings in disguise - rejection is redirection, ‘mistakes’ are lessons that fast-track our growth, and closed doors are an opportunity for an exciting new start. Challenges aren’t roadblocks - they guide you to a better path.
Start a gratitude journal. Every night for the next week, write down three things that went well for you that day, no matter how big or small. Then read out your notes first thing in the morning. You are now falling asleep in gratitude and shifting your focus back to it as soon as you wake up!
Make a gratitude jar. Think of one thing you’re grateful for, and write it on a piece of paper. Do this every day for at least a month. It may feel a bit silly at first but keep going! Try to really connect to the emotion of it - by supercharging gratitude with positive feelings, we multiply it. Put your notes inside a jar. At the end of each month, or in moments when you feel a bit low and need an emotional pick-me-up, read what you wrote. This is also a really fun (and crafty!), way to get your kids started on the daily gratitude practice.
Send out 'thank you' notes to your friends and colleagues. Gratitude is best shared, and I can guarantee it'll come back to you multiplied!
Write gratitude notes and put them somewhere where you can see them after waking up and throughout the day. Small reminders like “I’m grateful for…” , or “Thank you for following your dreams and working to make them a reality.” (I have a note like this next to my laptop, it’s such a nice reminder to keep pouring love into my business!) can make a huge difference, bringing you back to the present moment and realigning with gratitude in moments of stress.
Notice the beauty of the ordinary moments. Our life is a sum of small, everyday moments. By noticing and cherishing them, we create pockets of happiness in our day. This creates a ripple effect where our life slowly becomes a celebration of joy, and we start feeling naturally uplifted and grateful.
It’s really simple!
Next time you’re making your coffee, take time to enjoy the flavour. Spend time in nature. Journal. Pay special attention to the magic that hides in the ordinary - in the sunset and sunrise, the way the air smells after rainfall.
Take yourself out for a date to your favourite restaurant, just because. When you indulge in the small moments that make up your day, you become more present and at ease with yourself.
Also, As Dr. Rick Hanson, the author of my favourite book on the neuroscience of happiness, brilliantly said savouring positive experiences wires the brain for more joy.
To do this, stay in the positive feeling for more than 20 seconds, savouring the emotion. This gets more neurons to fire and wire together, making a stronger, positive mark on your memory.
So, are you ready to start creating the life of your dreams? Let me know what’s the number 1 gratitude practice that spoke to you, I’d love to know!
Need help transforming your life from ordinary to extraordinary? Or perhaps you’ve been struggling to figure out what your focus is? Book a 1:1 30-minute laser coaching session with me. It’s absolutely free with no further commitment, and I’m confident we can create powerful shifts during our time together!
