There are multiple reasons and ways to show appreciation, and all of them are good for our physical and emotional well-being as well.

Feeling grateful means appreciating the blessings and favours people have done (or wanted to do) for us and even aspiring to return them. Under no circumstances should we confuse it with taking on a debt with a person who was once important to us.

We can show gratitude in many ways: expressing it through words, sending a note, buying a gift or, with oneself, by being grateful for every moment. Transforming gratitude into a habit is good for our physical and emotional well-being and makes us feel more healthy, optimistic and happy.

How to be grateful

Gratitude, like many other aspects of our lives, can be trained. These are some exercises that we can practice every day:

1. Write down 3 rewarding things that have happened to you. It may be a message from someone close that has made you smile or an unexpected kiss from your partner or child.
2. Thank 3 people who have contributed to your well-being. Say thank you if someone has kept the door of the lift open for you, if someone has helped you with your shopping bags or if a vehicle has given way for you.
3. Go outside for a walk and show gratitude. Take a walk with all your senses tuned into the sights, smells, sounds and textures around you. Use this moment of well-being to give thanks for your health and having a family and friends who support you and protect you in your day-to-day life. These are aspects of life that perhaps we take for granted and don’t value enough.
4. Write a letter of gratitude. Tell that important person in your life that you are grateful for having them or that they helped you with something important in the past.
5. Save your happy moments. In a tin, an album, a notebook or scattered around the house. Save those objects or pictures that remind you of happy moments that have happened in the last year (concert tickets, drawings, photos, etc.). At the end of the year, you’ll be able to remember them and relive them.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder”, GK Chesterton.

Sources:

• Psychology and Mind
• The European Institute of Positive Psychology

This post is also available in: Portuguese (Portugal)