BY ELLIE CONSTANTINOU
Up until
a while ago, if you spoke to any of my friends or family, they’d tell you that
complaining comes as natural to me as breathing or eating. I’m trying to change
that I promise. Consciously living a life of gratitude can be hard and testing
but it speaks into existence more opportunities and a genuinely happier life!
Cynthia
Ozick said “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our
gratitude” - something I'm very guilty of doing myself. I become so focused
on achieving my big goals and trying to figure out how to overcome big
obstacles, that I forget about the simple things that make up the person I am
and the fact that I can actually have these goals.
We’re all
guilty of it, because it’s so much easier to complain about the bad things in
life than to celebrate all the good parts. Similarly, it’s easier to count our
problems and identify what’s missing from our lives, rather than what we’re
blessed to have. More often than not, we associate our happiness with the
outcome of certain events. Finding out that I’ve missed out on a 2:1 in an
essay that I know I worked hard on can put me in a bad mood for the rest of the
day. We assume that accomplishing our goals will add to our happiness, giving
control to circumstances that we are most likely unable to control.
We’re all
constantly chasing an idea of ‘happiness’, but this type of attitude means that
we’re never satisfied. Instead, we’re pursuing a new challenge before we’ve
even accomplished our current one. We’re led to believe that adding something
to our lives is what’s necessary to achieve this idea of happiness. It shifts
our attention away from our blessings, our achievements and the beauty of
living and being happy in the moment.
Becoming a
more grateful person includes being grateful for the smallest, most routine
things. It allows you to understand that happiness isn't dependent on the
outcome of external circumstances. As Cynthia Ozick said in the quote above, it
is often the things we take for granted that we should be most grateful for.
Waking up every morning is something we don't always look forward to, but have
we stopped to recognise how blessed we are that we wake up alive and well every
day?
How often
do we pause to appreciate all that we have?
Clean drinking water. At a time
where people have to travel miles every single day to access water that is safe
to drink, and over 100,000 residents in Michigan have been exposed to water
that is still unsafe to drink, cook or clean with.
Free education. How many
times did we wake up in the morning and not want to go to school? The fact that
education was compulsory meant that we never had to imagine what it would be
like to not have it. Nearly 60 million children do not have a school to go to,
or belong to families that are unable to afford an education.
Friends and family. We might
argue and they might annoy me but I’m so blessed to have a huge family and the
means and ability to communicate with them or see them, especially those that
live in different countries.
Travel. I can leave the UK! I can
travel outside of my own country, to nearly anywhere, without a second thought.
Plane journeys might be annoying or tiring but there are no rules keeping me in
one country and I am blessed with the means to travel abroad as often as I am
able to.
Safety. In a world that is experiencing
more and more war, violence and corruption, I’m grateful to live in a country
and environment that is relatively safe and peaceful. I spend the majority of
my free time searching for and booking trips out of the UK but having a home
that is safe to come back to is something that I should never fail to
appreciate.
All of
these things, among many others, seem to be normal, expected and taken for
granted. This is because I’ve never had to go without them. They’ve always been
there and I’ve never had to experience anything different. They’re easily
overlooked but it’s important to always give thanks, no matter what else is
going on in our lives, no matter what situation we face or a difficult
circumstance we may find ourselves in. We have the little things and that’s
something we should always be grateful for.
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