This Is How You Actually Practice The Art Of Gratitude
Gratitude.
I don’t know how many Ted Talks, podcasts, articles, and books there are on this subject, but I would presume there are many because everyone has at least heard once in their life the importance of being grateful.
I know for me I would hear mentors talk about gratitude as a part of their morning rituals and speak about the lists and jars they have created where they write down everything they are grateful for and document it. Oprah Winfrey is a major advocate for gratitude and often speaks of its wonders on her Super Soul Sundays.
But practicing gratitude, especially if you are not Oprah Winfrey, is not easy at all.
It’s easy for some to say one is being extremely ungrateful if they can’t think of a whole host of things they are thankful for in their lives, but as we know, life isn’t easy at all, and we all go through circumstances that often leave us bitter and hardened.
We look at our portions and are constantly filled with resentment, regrets, anger, sadness, and confusion because we want control of our worlds completely.
And when we lose that control, which will inevitably happen at some point in our lives, we lose the ability to be grateful for anything because it all just seems unfair.
But being grateful doesn’t have to be that hard. It doesn’t have to be some forced activity that you are enforcing into your life because you see gurus and speakers talking about it.
Being grateful is something that will eventually come automatically to you when you go through trials in your life and come out on the other side.
You will look back at where you once were, how bad things once were and how much you suffered and will be thankful for where you are today, because hell, it isn’t perfect, but it isn’t where you were a month ago, a year ago, or a few months ago.
Let me tell you a little something about life without sounding like I am 40 years old have been through it all: Life can go from 100 to 0 just like that.
You can go from the girl who is Instagram famous and living comfortably, to the girl who battles suicidal thoughts and depression on a daily basis.
You can go from the guy who is friends with everyone to having no friends and no one to call at all. You can go from a home, to homeless and living with a friend. You can go from dream job, to no job. You can go from single and worrying about your next outfit for the club, to being a single mom who now has new priorities to tackle.
We hear about hard situations all the time on TV and never actually think it can happen to us, but anything can happen in this life and at any time, and if you have found yourself in insurmountable circumstances where you actually overcame and are making progress, I want you to be thankful for this and for your life every single day.
Take it from someone who found it difficult to find five things to be grateful for last year because of all I have been through.
As a survivor of suicidal thoughts and numerous attempts, I am grateful that I am even making it to my 23 birthday next month, a milestone I was sure I would not see coming.
I think because I have been through so much I now have a different perspective on life and can wholeheartedly be grateful for certain things because I know what it is like to not have and want, to feel for better and get better, even though things are far from perfect.
So you see, at the end of the day, life is all about perspective.
Being able to see the good in what you believe may be horrible and far from perfect.
Because life will never be perfect as long as we are on this earth and it will never go the way we plan, but there are always blessings in every experience and every battle.
So I don’t believe you should look up how to be grateful from YouTubers and motivational speakers necessarily because you want someone to teach you an artform you have been missing.
I think the answers lie in your experiences and how you have bounced back from them, grateful for where you are now from where you were yesterday.
That in itself is practicing the art of gratitude. 
