Start Your Day with Gratitude to Help Improve Mental Health

What are you grateful for? Have you asked yourself this question lately?

Life always seems extremely busy but do we dwell on the positives of life typically? Feeling busy usually makes you feel chaotic which usually leads to negative thinking. It is important to help slow life down, and a way to do that can be to begin your day with gratitude.  

To help improve mental health, you should start your day always on a positive note. It can be as simple as being grateful to be able to live another day, the ability to eat, exercise, smile, see your family and/or friends, ability to go to work, actually have a job and income, etc. Gratitude practice can be a form of meditation. Being able to reflect on your life as well as the ability to be in the present moment is introspective. Reflecting on how you feel on the inside impacts how you feel outwardly, which is why this practice is so effective. 

Gratitude can help improve overall well-being, help boost your self confidence, enhance the relationships with other people, as well as your individual physical health. If you begin to feel good on the inside, then you are going to make positive decisions towards how you feel on the outside. This can help get you on the right track to regular practice of exercise. We know exercise helps increase endorphins, dopamine and serotonin naturally which are our feel good hormones. 

Do you need any more convincing? What’s stopping you from practicing gratitude? 

Take less than 1 minute as soon as you open your eyes to start the day to begin by either saying your list out loud, writing a list down on a notepad near your bed, or taking a mental list of 3 things you are grateful for. 

If you are anything like me, the mornings are typically the hardest part of the day. Once I started this gratitude practice, it helped me to feel more refreshed, more organized,  and more time efficient. It helped me to develop a better routine in the mornings with a positive outlook on life and the rest of the day ahead. After trying this for about 2-4 weeks, I promise you are going to begin loving waking up in the mornings!