Gratitude is the Key to Happiness

We’re big on gratutude at Live in the Present. We all have day to day issues to deal with but, ultimately, I think that they can ALL be overcome with gratitude.

Gratitude is a wonderful thing. It raises the human mind to great heights. Those that feel gratitude have the energy to create great things and can live in the positive expectation of good things to come. Equally ingratitude is a bad thing that’s drags us down to the depths of negativity. Those that feel ingratitude live with the negative expectation that tomorrow will be as bad, if not worse, than today. In gratitude we turn on the light that illuminates wonder. In ingratitude we turn off the light and experience the darkness of demotivation and at worse blackness of despair.

You have a mind and you have a brain but are they the same thing? Your brain is a piece of meat. It may be a clever piece of meat full of electrical connections and powerful endorphins, but without the mind it is, simply, meat.

Does the brain create and generate this experience of the mind, so that at the point of death the mind ceases to be? Or is the brain a clever switching station through which the mind expresses itself? This would mean that the mind would carry on after the meat has ceased to function. Let’s go deeper…

For some the mind is termed ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ for others it is ‘personality’ or ‘psychology’. Whatever you call it your mind is the essence of who you are, of what you think and all that you feel. Perhaps most importantly, it is the driver of all that you do. What interests me, is this relationship between mind and brain and how we can influence it to achieve the experience of life that we really want. This, in my terms as a psychotherapist, is the fulfilment that we all deserve.

gratitude quote

We know that if we change the brain, with legal or recreational drugs, we change how the mind feels, thinks and responds. We also know that if we change how we think, feel and respond we change the chemistry of the brain. It’s as though there is a tube with the brain at one end and the mind at the other. Whichever end we move the other must follow.

Now, it would seem to me that moving the mind is a far better way of effecting the brain than taking drugs (prescribed or otherwise). If you want your brain to produce the chemistry that will make your mind happy and fulfilled you need to change the way that you feel. Most of us can accept that we can control what we do with our body and our actions, and we can also change the way that we think. Few people realise that we can also change the way that we feel. A happy mind equals a happy brain. This flows back the other way, happy brain equals happy mind.

The quickest and most powerful way to develop a happy brain is to fill your mind full of gratitude. The key to happiness is gratitude.

Whatever you are doing, wherever you are doing it, look around you. You may be in a luxurious hotel or a down town gutter. Regardless, if you see the things around you with gratitude you will begin to effect your brain chemistry and create a happy brain. There is nothing in life too small to be grateful for. The simple fact that you are alive is reason enough.

Let us rise up and be thankful,
for if we didn’t learn a lot today,
at least we learned a little,
and if we didn’t learn a little,
at least we didn’t get sick,
and if we got sick,
at least we didn’t die;
so,
let us all be thankful.
Buddha.

When you learn to be grateful for what you have, even when it is a little, you create the positive brain chemistry that allows you to move forward with hope and expectation. It is then that you will develop the ability to create a world of experience that you really, really, really want.

Grab a copy of our free eBook to learn more about gratitude and a few other things too.

Be happy, be grateful and live in the present.

Sean x

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  1. […] blog post this morning from Live in The Present entitled “Gratitude is the key to happiness”. It reminded me of the importance of appreciating circumstances as they are, rather than as we may […]

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