Gratitude

Happy Friday everyone.
I hope you have a great weekend in store.
I'll settle into blogging once a week or so unless any of you have questions I might be able to help with or comments that need relating to. In the meantime, as this is a brand new blog and already I've received such wonderful feedback, I wanted to use this beautiful Friday to talk about gratitude. Why is gratitude such a useful tool? For starters, it's because we find what we look for. If you don't know what I mean by that, consider this.
It's time to buy a new car, so, you head out to the dealers and you start to narrow down your options. As you get closer to making a decision and you're tossed up between vehicle x and vehicle y you start looking around as you drive from place to place in the car you no longer want. All of a sudden, over the next couple of days, every other car on the road is some version of vehicle x or y. Obviously this doesn't mean they weren't there before, it just means that now that you're 'conscious' of them you find them everywhere. For those of you not old enough to drive or who have never bought a car, you can extrapolate this to computers or watches or jeans or... you name it. So, now that we've established that you see what you look for, why would we look for things to be grateful for and why is gratitude so useful?
When we complain, it's obviously about something that makes us unhappy. The more we complain, the less happy we are and for longer periods of time. When we are grateful it's obviously for something that brings us happiness. We are creatures of momentum: creatures of habit. The more you practice gratitude for the things that are good in your life, the happier you will be and the more  you will find things for which to be grateful. Complaining is a virus of the mind. Gratitude is the antidote. Before you go to bed at night and the first thing when you rise in the morning, jot down a handful of things for which you are grateful, five or so should do it. Mix them up so they aren't the same one's all the time. After a while you will find more and more as you move from noticing instances for which to be grateful into a grateful (and infinitely happier) state of mind. As you find more to be grateful for you will have less to complain about. Give it a shot, you have nothing to lose but the time you spend being unhappy.

Speaking of gratitude. Thanks for reading this blog. I very much appreciate you taking the time. Ask a question, leave a comment, tell a friend or 2.
Have a spectacular weekend.