''Gratitude Is The Wine For The Soul. Go On. Get Drunk. ''

''I'm grateful to wake up and know I have another chance.''

I have been bugging everyone around me to take on the challenge of starting a gratitude journal.
It is such an easy habit to implement to your daily life (takes no more than 1 minute before you go to bed), and it truly helps to feel differently about our lives. Not to mention that doing it on a regular basis comes with many benefits!
According to a 2011 study published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, individuals who practice gratitude sleep better! Also, exercicing our brains to look for the positive aspects of our days has been shown to improve psychological and physical health, as well as self-esteem, social relationships, etc. There are many! If we have 10 minutes in our day to be on Facebook, we have no doubt three minutes to do something that in the long run, can improve our mental strenght. Being grateful helps to become more optimistic, but it can also help us to bounce back faster from adversity. When you train your brain everyday in such a way, you are teaching your brain that you are stronger than it thinks it is.

The good is everywhere around us. The only requirement is that we have to look for it. Hence why a couple of months ago, I turned off completely anything related to the news. I did not want to feed my mind with any more negativity. Because the more we feed our minds with toxicity, the more roadblocks it will put in our way. And it has helped me so much. I think in the end, it all comes down to choosing. We always have the choice.

Research has found that each one uf us has what they call a ''baseline for happiness''. In other words, it means that we have a set point to which our happiness will always come back to, after exciting events, just like after unhappy ones. Even though that may suck for the ones of us who did not inherit from the happy gene, we can still take the action to rewire the way our mind operates. Just like we learn how to speak a new language, we can learn how to become happier!

I also specifically started a journal this year to reframe negative events into more positive ones. It may seem like a mundane thing to do, but it's not, because the more you do it, the more it adds up, and the better your brain will become to shift your focus when things do not go the way you planned them to.
I owe this to Albert Ellis, the best therapist of the 20th century, who is the master at doing so!
The form of therapy he uses (Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy) is simply the best.

The four unhelpful beliefs he indicates are:
1- The demands (must/absolute/shoulds/oughts)
2- Awfulizing/catastrophizing (it's awful, terrible, horrible!)
3- Frustration intolerance (I can't stand it)
4- Self-Downing, Others-Downing or Life-Downing (I'm bad or wothless/He/She is bad or worthless or Life is not worthwhile).
(I think most of us can admit that we have engaged too many times in one or many of them.)

I took note of a powerful sentence written by Albert Ellis in his book '' How to control your anxiety before it controls you'' : ''In the final analysis, if you use REBT conscientiously, you can see even the most unfortunate adversities that may occur in your life such a being afflicted with cancer or the death of close relatives - as human tragedies, but hardly devastating horrors. In this way, you can prepare yourself for the worst posibilities that are likely to plague you and still be determined to cope with them and lead a reasonably happy life. Taking the challenge of grim adversity and seeing that if it happens you can still be proactive is one of the best attitudes you can acquire. A gift you can give yourself.''

I told you he was such a wise and brilliant psychologist!
I wish I could apply half of this into my own life!

On the other hand, if we're more like '' F*** the silver lining, forget it, ain't applying this s*** into my life'', then we can keep in mind the wise words of Mark Twain 😉

I once read somewhere that having meaningful relationships was identified as the only thing which really mattered in life. I truly believe in it.💖
In the instant technology world we currently live in today, we may be prone to think that it helps us to build and maintain more our friendships and our relationships, but it's quite the opposite.
I was watching a live Fb session hosted by the brilliant Amy Morin last week, and she pointed out that 50% of americans consider themselves to be lonely often. That is huge and alarming.
In fact, she also added that studies have found that loneliness is as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
It only makes sense when you think that as human beings, we are social animals, and we desperately need contact, affection and appreciation from one another.

I mentioned this the other day, but the positive ratio of happy married couples is 5:1.
Hence why John Gottman advises us to ''scan the environment for things you can praise and appreciate''. And it's also important to add that the 5:1 ratio is powerful enough, because negative interactions have way more power to inflict damage, and it takes a lot more effort to restore a happy climate with positive interactions afterwards. Gottman also said that respect and affection are essential to add into our days with our partner, even in the most trivial things. These little marks of admiration add up in the end, and they make the difference.
As you can see, it's all about the power of gratitude💟

Cultivating gratitude can help us to become less materialistic.
We should not let this idea that has been hammered into our heads, that happiness is to be found on things that cost money.
When we start to pay attention to the simple pleasures in life, we realize that they have been close to us all along, but it is us who have failed to see them.