A Secret to Living a Happier Life...
- Abi
- Nov 2, 2023
- 4 min read
For this week's blog post, I thought I would do something a little different...
Today, I wanted to base my post on a section of "Casting all your care upon him..." Book 2. I thought I would do this in a slightly different way, by focusing on the daily thought for today in my book - day 306.
Day 306 is based on the topic of 'Gratitude' - and personally I believe that this is one secret that we can use to feel happier in our lives. However, I know that this doesn't mean that gratitude magically takes away all our problems - life still has its trials and challenges for each of us. We all have different challenges in our lives. I know and appreciate that our challenges are still difficult for each of us to cope with. However, for me, gratitude is just one way which helps me to feel a little happier in my life.
Based on this belief of the benefit and importance of gratitude in my life, I wanted to share this with you all today, in the hope that it might also help you in your life even just a little...
Gratitude is connected with three aspects:
Focusing on the positive things we have in our lives
Being thankful for these positive things
Being content in our lives
These aspects can be seen as a process... The first step to being grateful is to focus on all the positive things in our lives. This then leads to us realising all the blessings we have, and so we are thankful for them. If we are thankful for things in our lives, we are being grateful - we are showing gratitude. Finally, being thankful and grateful leads to us being content in our lives!
So, before we conclude today's blog, I want to focus on two more aspects - who we should be thankful to in our lives, and how gratitude and contentment can help us to be happier.
Firstly, most importantly we should be thankful to God for everything we have in our lives. God provides us with everything we need each day.
In Acts 17:25, we see that God "...giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;"
Also, in 1 Timothy 6:17 we see that we should trust in "the living God" "...who giveth us richly all things to enjoy;"
In Psalm 68:19, we read: "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits..."
From these verses, we see how that it is God who gives us everything and he gives us so many blessings each day. Therefore we should be thankful to God for everything we have in our lives. We can show our gratitude and thankfulness to God by praying to him, and telling him how thankful we are for his goodness to us.
Also, we can show our gratitude to others too, by thanking everyone for anything they do for us however big or small it is.
Finally, let's think about contentment and how being grateful and content in our lives can help us to feel a little or a lot happier in our lives. We are all different, and all experience different feelings and emotions.
Contentment is defined as feeling happiness and satisfaction in our lives. By focusing on all the positive things we have in our lives, this can help us to realise that we all have some happy and good things in our lives. Often when we think about all the good things we do have in life, we realise we actually have a lot more good things than we sometimes feel like we have. This realisation can then lead us to feel a sense of happiness and satisfaction, because we realise that life is better than we may feel like it is - we all have at least something to be positive and happy about. Again, this doesn't take away from how hard our struggles are, but it can help to lift our mood, even just a little. This in turn can help us to cope with life better.
Therefore, in a nutshell, this is why I believe gratitude is one secret to living a happier life - because it helps us to cope with life better as it helps us to lift our mood even just a little bit.
So, I thought I'd leave you with a simple, little exercise to do... Try writing a gratitude list or starting a 'Gratitude Journal'. In your list write down all the positive things you have in your life, however big or small they are. Sometimes the small things can still bring us some happiness. If you decide to start a 'Gratitude Journal', you could write a daily list of what you are grateful for on each day. You could also write down anything that went well on each day, any achievements you made, and any moments which made you smile.
To help you with your activities, these notepads from Bible Quotes Creations are perfect at only £4 each! They also would make a great Christmas gift too!
If you are wanting to read more positive encouragement to help you in your life, take a look at my anxiety self help books "Casting all your care upon him..." Available on this website, under the section 'Self Help Books' Also, keep an eye out for my NEW book - The Scripture Journal, which will be available to buy this month! More details and the release date will be coming soon...