Living In Gratitude: Resilience

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I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. ~Carl Gustav Jung

Resilience is our capacity for stress-related growth, to recover quickly from difficulties.

There are two distinct aspects to resilience:

  • Durability or hardiness, which is 0ur ability to manage daily stressors and hassles successfully
  • Bouncing Back, our capacity to effectively recover and grow from major life adversities like death or divorce

We can build and reinforce our resilience muscles by focusing on three key things.

  1. THINK DIFFERENTLY

By recognizing and understanding how we think about adversity, stress and challenging scenarios, we can alter how we think about them and as such, how we react to them. Our thinking runs along a sliding scale from optimism to pessimism.

People who have a more pessimistic way of thinking tend to impart personalization, permanence and pervasiveness on stressful situations. They tell themselves:

“This problem will be around forever. It will affect my entire life and its all my fault.”

Consistent pessimistic thinking increases our likelihood of depression, anxiety, hopelessness and helplessness. Read more

Live An Inspired Life

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Achieving true happiness is a personal, everyday process that comes from inside each of us.

Happiness isn’t something we can buy or that someone gives us. Like everything worth having, happiness is something that takes focused effort.

Your attitude makes the difference!

Our attitude and how we react to the world, the people in our lives and the challenges we face either lift us up or bring us down. We always have a choice. By striving for an optimistic outlook and focusing on the good, we allow happiness to take root.

Take charge of your personal happiness!

Embark on an adventure of appreciation with our 30-Day E-Course. Receive $7 off through July 30, 2016 when you use promotional code GETHAPPY.

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Living In Gratitude: 20 Things You Will Be Glad You Did In Life

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I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman

1. Traveling 

Traveling broadens our horizons. It exposes us to new cultures, food, languages and ways of thinking as well as the awe-inspiring beauty of the world.

2. Learning another language

Being able to communicate in languages other than your native tongue is a wonderful gift.

3. Being brave enough to do new things

Not letting fear hold you back enables you to experience new adventures and learn new things. After all, you had to do everything for the first time…

4. Making physical fitness a priority

Your body is amazing. Take good care of it so it will carry you through life, to new places, up hills and into valleys. Read more

Living In Gratitude: Diversity

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No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People learn to hate, and if they learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. ~Nelson Mandela

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all accepted ourselves and others exactly as we are?

Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we lived from a place of love and acceptance, grateful for the wondrous diversity the world has to offer?

It’s okay that we are all different, that we have unique opinions and distinct beliefs.

Consider how bland life would be if everything was the same. If there was only one kind of tree, one type of flower, one landscape, one food, one aroma, one song, one book. Read more

Living In Gratitude: Just For Now

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Just for now, without asking how, let yourself sink into stillness.

Just for now, lay down the

weight you so patiently

bear upon your shoulders.

Feel the earth receive

you, and the infinite

expanse of sky grow even

wider as your awareness

reaches up to meet it. Read more

Living In Gratitude: 6 Ways to Grow Gratitude at Work

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Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. ~Alex Korb Ph.D

On a surface level, appreciation is good for employee engagement, motivation and retention. Employee recognition and appreciation can create a unique company culture and strengthen employee relationships. Companies can deliberately infuse their cultures, from top to bottom, with the proverbial “attitude of gratitude.” Employee appreciation boosts performance and engagement as well as the employee’s well-being and health. When coworkers show appreciation or gratitude towards one another, a more social and prosocial interaction is created.

By implementing gratitude into company culture, employees are more willing to spread their positive feelings with others, whether it’s helping out with a project or taking time to notice and recognizing those that have gone the extra mile.

The greatest psychological effect of appreciation is the happiness and other emotions immediately felt when we either give or receive gratitude. Gratitude creates good feelings, cheerful memories, better self-esteem, feeling more relaxed and more optimistic. All of these emotions creates a pay it forward and  “we’re in this together” mentality in the workplace, which in turn, makes your organization more successful. Plus, the dopamine effect will encourage a continuous cycle of recognition if everyone participates. All of these emotions, plus many more, are what most employers want out of their staff to again, create unity. Read more

Living In Gratitude: 7 Ways To Train Your Brain To Be Happy

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Neil Pasricha is a Canadian author and speaker who advocates positivity and simple pleasures. He is known for his New York Times best seller, “The Book Of Awesome”, as well as his TEDx talk, “The 3 A’s of Awesome”.

Backed by loads of research, his book, “The Happiness Equation”, discusses how we can train our brains to be happy. Happiness is something we do to make life ‘awesome’ rather than the result of everything being awesome. It comes from conscious awareness and thought using practical, effective and enjoyable strategies.

1. Three walks a week

Researchers have found that the more physically active we are, the greater our overall feelings of excitement and enthusiasm. And it doesn’t take much: just 30 minutes of brisk walking, three days a week will do it.

2. 20-minute replay

Taking 20 minutes each day to write about a positive experience allows you to relive the event. It can be anything but the focus is that it was something that made you feel good. The purpose is to rekindle those happy feelings. Read more

Living In Gratitude: 7 Behaviors of Conscientious People

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Conscientiousness is a personality trait of being thorough, careful and attentive. People who exhibit this trait are efficient and organized, aim for achievement and possess self-discipline.

According to research, people who are conscientious live longer, earn more, have more influence, are happier at work and have better relationships than those who don’t display this characteristic. They also tend to purposefully avoid behaviors that will be detrimental to their long-term happiness and their overall success. Instead they focus on what will contribute to their achievements and contentment.

  1. Consider their purchases

Conscientious people stick to a budget. They don’t make impulsive and unnecessary purchases. Instead, they take time to consider if they really need or want something and how that might impact their finances. They also pay their bills on time and stay within their credit limits, all things that benefit their long-term financial stability. Read more

Living In Gratitude: Let Your Hair Down

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Fun is good. ~Dr. Seuss

Now those are words to live by. Fun is good. We need to find time to let our hair down and enjoy life.

Find time today to sing, dance, laugh, skip, be silly. Have some fun. Life is too short for being serious all the time.

All too often, we get caught up in the serious things life throws at us.

  • Can we pay our bills this month?
  • An argument we had with a loved one.
  • An issue in our job or problem with our health.
  • Feeling overcome with everything we have to do each day.

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Living In Gratitude: Taking Risks

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You miss 100% of the shots you never take ~Wayne Gretzky

Making a big life change is pretty scary.

But, there’s something even scarier.

Regret.

Life is all about taking risks. We do it from the moment we are born but as we get older, many of us shy way from things that seem too uncertain. We begin to play the “What if” game and often get caught up by fear of failure, making mistakes or the unknown.

But consider this: Everything we have ever done in life, we’ve had to do for the very first time. If we always played it safe, we wouldn’t be walking, talking, have friends, own a house, traveled, interviewed for the job we really wanted… Each of those entailed risk. And when we stop and think about it, look how much we’ve achieved! Read more