This past week in my yoga classes, I spoke about the balance between “not enough” and “too much”. There is a space in between those two extremes where we feel good, challenged, yet, content.
Unfortunately, we often lean away from this balance.
How can we come to a place that feels like enough? How can we take our daily lives and find space to breathe and be content? It’s all in finding balance.
- Through a gratitude practice.
A recent study showed that individuals who kept a daily gratitude journal felt better about their lives than those who recorded hassles, stress and other life events. The study also showed that even if you can only commit to this practice once a week you’ll be better off.
Plus, when you show gratitude toward others you not only lift their spirits, you also lift your own. Here are 3 tips for finding more gratitude in your life.
1. Feel the grace. In our culture, we’re more likely to notice what we don’t have (or what someone else does have), than what we have ourselves. Take a moment and connect with what’s good in your life your health? Your family? Your home? Look around you. Do you see an environment that feels inspiring? How can you be grateful for what is?
2. Make a gratitude ritual. In my house, we sit down for dinner and share what we are grateful for in our day. You could make this a bedtime ritual, something you share or something you keep to yourself.
3. Stop working. Instead of busting through your workday, or even your exercise routine, set aside a time when you remind yourself to look up and enjoy. Get outside, have a cup of tea, turn up the music. Make it consistent and you’ll remember that there are a lot of things worth living for.
4. Be thankful. The more you remember to show your thanks the more often you’ll see how little things impact others. Thank the grocer who is bagging your groceries, or the bank teller who might be having a stressful day. Smile. Let someone else go first. It’s in the small things that we ultimately find the most joy and reward.
With her love of health and writing, Melissa has written for such publications as Shape, Natural Solutions, Yoga Journal, Self and Pilates Style, and has created recipes and food-oriented stories for such publications as Delicious Living and Cooking Light.
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