A Guide to Happiness through Gratitude

Practicing gratitude can bring you happiness, inner peace and comfort in times of transition, change, confusion, and loss. A shift toward a more appreciative mind-set will trigger incredible positive changes in your life. Here's three steps "pocket guide" to get you started. Print it out, keep it with you and use it as often as you need.
Remember A Daily Gratitude Journal will further assist you count your blessings and make sense and meaning of the world around you and the people in it. Trust me, each night as you enter 3 things you are thankful for, you will go to sleep with a smile on your face knowing your purpose in life and experience a deep sense of joy and inner peace. What more can one ask for? Happiness is quite easy when you come right down to it. Read on for more suggestions and keep smiling. You look great!

1) Connect with your soul. Whether you call it your soul, your spirit, your essence this is the part of you that experiences your life on the deepest level. It is who you are and who you were meant to be. Your soul is the part of you that is naturally joyful, lighthearted, loving, compassionate, generous . . . and yes, grateful. As you focus more and more on gratitude you automatically shift into this part of yourself. You feel happier and more loving - and express these emotions freely and easily. You look at the world with a new set of eyes.

2) Be open to limitless possibilities. Your soul also knows that for every desire born within you, a corresponding possibility exists! When you are grateful for what currently exists in your life, you magically feel more positive, you see the endless possibilities in life and are motivate to move forward and conquer the world. You're happy, positive and confident!

3) Honor and appreciate yourself and others. By honoring, appreciating and celebrating your life- its past, present and future you feel a sense of accomplishment, growth, and wisdom. By accepting others for who they are, you honor their goodness and you feel happy and fulfilled. Of course, like most of us, not everyone has been wonderful or kind to you in your life. But each person has a soul - that deeper self of love, kindness, compassion, free from anger and negativity. Look to the person's soul-and love them for whom they are.
Most angry, negative people are in emotional pain. They have not connected with their soul. Honor their soul as you honor yours. Put aside a hurt one may have caused you; don't take it personally. Look deeper, work from your soul, connect with it. You will find a greater sense of happiness, inner peace and gratitude.

One of my favorite quotes:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~Melody Beattie