Gratitude isn’t just a practice of saying thank you, but also the process of focusing your attention away from problems and danger and onto things which are good.
It takes a lot of practice to make gratitude a habit, because our mind are usually powerful problem detectors.
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Since gratitude is a relative experience, it’s often useful to recognize how many things aren’t problems in your life, but you just never notice them.
Even if you feel like you don’t live in great conditions, that your friends have better jobs and relationships there were many points in time when things could have been much, much worse.
The next time you think the average person is better off than you, ask yourself whether you might not simply be ignoring the problems and pains of others, simply because they aren’t as visible as the success people want you to see.
If we feel like someone else is getting a better deal than us, we’re likely to throw it back in their face.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t fight against unfairness, but there will always be unfairness in life and so it’s better to step back and see that opportunities we get in life aren’t always so bad, even if others seem way better.
Being grateful for your problems cand be a tough perspective to adopt (especially if your problems are extreme or tragic); however, the problems themselves allow you an opportunity to live differently than if your life had been without them.
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The habit of being grateful starts with appreciating every good thing in life and recognizing that there is nothing too small for you to be thankful for.