Growing in Thankfulness

Thankfulness is a key to a peaceful life. As you grow in thankfulness, you will find it easier to cope with stressful situations. You’ll find more joy in everyday life. Thankfulness will help you be more forgiving and more in tune with God.

Thankfulness is something you can choose to grow in your daily life. You just have to be intentional about it and practice it. There are simple but powerful ways to grow an attitude of thankfulness, and we’ll look at some of those in this article.

Sometimes, it’s hard to feel thankful. But you can choose to be thankful, even if your emotions don’t line up with that choice. You might not feel thankful, but you can choose to say, in faith, “I’m thankful.” The more you decide to be thankful, the more your heart will start to feel thankful.

Benefits of Thankfulness

Thankfulness is powerful medicine for you and those around you. It helps in so many ways:

• Redirects your focus to God.
• Changes your outlook on a situation or on life in general.
• Helps you connect with others in a healthy way.
• Brings you into peace.
• Helps you be kinder to yourself.
• Helps others around you feel more at peace because you carry that peace everywhere you go.

Thankfulness also helps your brain. It helps you be in a better mood. It gets your mind out of a ditch and back into joy. It restores calm. It helps regulate your emotions. And it helps you see situations more clearly. All by how it affects your brain. That’s pretty amazing!

Practice Growing in Thankfulness

Here are some simple but powerful ways to start growing in thankfulness. You don’t have to do all of these, all the time. Pick one to start with, and then pick another later in the week as a variation. The main goal is to make thankfulness a daily habit.

• Start and/or end your day by naming five things you’re thankful for.
• Associate some routine, like getting into your car or washing dishes, with saying one thing you’re thankful for.
• When a negative thought comes into your mind, replace it by naming something you’re thankful for. You might say you’re thankful for something related to the thought, or something else entirely. The main idea is to redirect your mind from the negative to thankfulness.
• If you’re facing something stressful or fearful, think on something you’re thankful for.
• Tell somebody you’re thankful for them “just because.” Or give a stranger a heartfelt, “Thank you so much” when they smile or bring water to your table or hold open a door.

• Look up a Bible verse on being thankful and reflect on it throughout the day.
• If a bad memory or hurtful words come to mind, replace those with a memory you’re thankful for or kind words you’re thankful for.
• Thank yourself for being you. Tell God you’re thankful for you. This one doesn’t come easily to a lot of us. But if you say it in faith, even without emotion, you’ll experience the benefits of thankfulness.
• Tell God you’re thankful for Him.

These are just some ideas of how to get started growing in thankfulness. Practice thankfulness daily, and you will start to feel a change, inside and out. Start noticing the difference in how you feel, how you approach things, how you relate to people. Thankfulness really helps.

Let’s close by thanking God for the gift of thankfulness!

Dear God, thank You for giving us the ability to be thankful. Help us to live in thankfulness. Just knowing we belong to You is more than enough to keep us thankful all day, every day. Continue to grow our thankfulness. Thank You for loving us. In Jesus’ name. Amen