You may have heard the phrase, “count your blessings” before, but how often do you actually do it? Do you pause to feel grateful when something good happens? How about when you need an emotional boost? Counting your blessings is one sure way to develop a constant mind-set of gratitude, which can turn a mundane life into a miraculous life.
You may have tried keeping a “gratitude journal” by recording the things you are grateful for each evening before bed, and that is one effective method, but there are other ways of focusing on gratitude if that didn’t work well for you.
Below are three more simple ways to count your blessings every day:
1) Journal your blessings all through the day.
Rather than saving your gratitude journal activities for bedtime only, why not make them an ongoing activity all day long? Keep a small notebook and pencil in your pocket and write a quick note every time something positive happens. Your entries don’t have to take up a lot of time. For example, you could write things like, “A clerk offered to assist me at the hardware store” or “Janet admired my blouse” or “I got a free bagel with my coffee this morning.” Little things matter! The more you focus on them, the more you’ll begin to feel grateful about the bigger things too.
2) Find some good in the “bad.”
Just like you can journal your positive experiences, you can make it your mission to find something positive about difficult situations. Using the same little notebook, every time you encounter a challenge or seemingly negative situation, find one positive thing you can say about it and write it down. For example, if your boss seems to be in a bad mood, you could write, “My boss doesn’t determine my emotional state; I do. I choose to feel happy and grateful for this freedom.” Or if you encounter obstacles while working on a project or goal, you could write, “I relish the opportunity to put more effort into this project because it will contribute to a better end result.”
3) Finally, you could literally count your blessings.
Rather than recording the specifics, simply make a mark in your notebook every time you experience something to feel grateful about. At the end of the day, glance over your page of marks. How many are there? Make a note of the number and then try to beat it each day afterwards. There are literally thousands of possible things to be grateful about in the course of a single day; you just have to be willing to see them
The more time you spend emphasizing your blessings, the more you’ll find yourself feeling genuinely grateful for every day of your life.