Gratitude – The Secret of happiness
“Develop and attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” – Brian Tracy.
One of the biggest components of happiness and contentment in life comes from gratitude. The ability to be grateful for the situations you already have in life will go a long way in helping you find true happiness.
Self-improvement and goal setting will help move your life from good to great but if you can’t fully enjoy what you have now, you may never find the contentment that you are looking for. Not even massive success will change this.
When it comes to work, training and relationships, most of us have big dreams. Whether you have written a detailed goal or just the thought in the back of your brain sparking your excitement, we all have at one time imagined ourselves being perfectly happy.
I believe it is important to write down your goals and have a step by step plan of attack. This will give a good sense of direction and thus a far better chance of achieving them
I’ve attached at goal setting booklet for you to download at the end of this article.
What is the point of goals? If you are finding that the ones you have achieved don’t feel make you feel any happier? Sure you have a certain sense of achievement but apart from that life still feels the same. You still feel a void that needs filling.
If you are climbing to the top of a peak, the best way to fully enjoy the experience is to enjoy not only reaching the peak but embracing the journey to the top! Being able to stop half way up, take in the environment and experience the view with the people you are with will enhance your whole experience.
Once you realise that everything around you is so beautiful, it doesn’t matter that you are not at the top yet, because you are enjoying the journey!
Being grateful in every situation is the key.
It is not always easy to be grateful for every situation you are in, especially when things seem catastrophically bad. Every experience whether it is good or bad is a necessary one to get you to where you want to be. There are always positives that come from every situation, and looking for them and being grateful for them will help you be happy no matter how bad things seem.
Take Fred’s situation for example.
Fred was a marketing manager at Toyota. He arrived at work one morning only to find out he had been fired. Fred wasn’t able to find a decent job in his area of expertise, so he had to take a lower paying job in a different field or work. As you could imagine this was very hard for Fred at the time. He had been living a fairly expansive lifestyle and payments and bills started to add up. Fred was stressed to say the least but he tightened up his finances and worked hard at his lesser paying job. He also started taking courses to up-skill himself in his spare time.
After 1 year of hardship, Fred finally found a new marking job and with his new found work ethic. Fred moved his way up to CEO within 3 years of being with his company. Not only that, Fred had learnt to be so good with his money in the tough times and that he was now saving enough to retire 5 years earlier than he had previously hoped.
Not only was he now not upset that he had been fired from his previous job….He was glad.
A good way to enhance your gratitude for what you have is to write down 5 things every day that you are grateful for. Try doing this at the end of the day, every day for a month, and see how you will start to view your life different. You will start to enjoy the things that you do have, instead of getting angry and what you don’t have. Never stop chasing your dreams, and always enjoy your journey to greatness
Download your booklet here.Goal Setting 101
Daniel
