Do you live a privileged life? I can guess that you do. How can I guess that so easily? Well, you are probably sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping on some beverage, on a laptop, or a tablet, reading this article on the internet. (Have you ever tried a gratitude meditation?)
If that isn’t a privileged life, I don’t know what is. There are a hundred things you have that millions of people on this planet don’t. But, feeling gratitude isn’t about feeling bad about the fact that we are better off than others. That’s not we are doing here.
Gratitude is all about focusing on the positive things in our lives. There are so many positive things that happen on a daily basis with us. Hundreds of them, in fact.
But, as human beings, we have a laser-like focus on the one or two negative things that might happen.
A Daily Gratitude Meditation Practice Changes Us
There are hundreds of articles, scientifically proven, to show that feeling grateful, or the attitude of gratitude changes our body and brain chemistry for the better. The list below says it all:
- People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis have been found to exercise more regularly, have fewer physical symptoms, feel better about their lives as a whole, and feel more optimistic about their upcoming week as compared to those who keep journals recording the stressors or neutral events of their lives.
- Daily discussion of gratitude results in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness, energy, and sleep duration and quality. Grateful people also report lower levels of depression and stress, although they do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.
- People who think about, talk about, or write about gratitude daily are more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another person.
- Those with a disposition towards gratitude are found to place less importance on material goods, are less likely to judge their own or others’ success in terms of possessions accumulated, are less envious of wealthy people, and are more likely to share their possessions with others.
- Emerging research suggests that daily gratitude practices may have some preventative benefits in warding of coronary artery disease.
Gratitude Changes Everything From The Inside Out
If we actually sit down and think about it, we could probably come up with a list. That is hundreds of items long of everything we are grateful for.
I have a gratitude meditation that I created specifically for this purpose. Every night before I fall asleep, I play this gratitude meditation.
I listen to my voice listing out all of the beautiful things, people, and ideas that I have gratitude for.
There are hundreds of items.
I couldn’t possibly list them all, so I categorize them. But, by the time I fall asleep, I am floating on a bed of joy, and magic.
Who’s the luckiest person on the planet? That’s me.
I wanted to share this gratitude meditation with you.
