Gratitude is Love: Creating happiness with a grateful heart
Gratitude is Love
sharing appreciation spreads love & creates happiness
Lately I have been thinking a lot about the art of gratitude and how it is truly an expression of love. When we express our thankfulness to all those whom we come into contact with, we are spreading love and creating happiness in our lives. What we focus on expands, and when we focus on all of the gifts of life, more happiness grows. Sustained happiness can be more easily found in the everyday nuances of life, rather than in the big dramatic events. Of course a birth, a job promotion, a long vacation are all events to take joy in and be grateful for. The thing is, those moments are pretty infrequent. It’s far more rewarding to find gratitude in the small, everyday occurrences that make our lives good, such as an unexpenctantly sunny, warm day in the middle of a cold winter. Or being grateful for clean water that is at our disposal anytime we want it. Or the joy of thinking about a friend and then having them call you at that very moment. Taking time to notice these gifts and then really feeling the gratitude in our hearts creates happiness in even the most routine of days.
Once you have achieved the mindset of recognizing and acknowledging life’s gifts, the next step is to express your gratitude to the people in your life. To be in gratitude is to be in the consciousness of love, and to be grateful is to express love. By expanding our perception of what love is, we can find and express love in everything. Love can be more broadly defined by including any thought or emotion that is not rooted in fear, jealousy, resentment or anger. When we think about love from this perspective, it becomes easy to find love all around us. Expressing gratitude for a small favor from a friend, or for something beautiful you noticed that day about your partner, or for a stranger who let you go ahead in the supermarket line are all acts of love. When you express your gratitude, you create love and happiness in not only the people and the surrounding world, but within yourself as well.
Every individual is empowered with the ability to find and create happiness in all that they do. That being said, I’d like to thank each and every person who took the time to read this article.
In happiness,
Joanne
Joanne Douglass Trujillo, L.Ac MSOM
Acupuncturist, Herbalist & NAET Allergy Elimination Specialist practicing Chinese Medicine in a Denver acupuncture clinic located within the Integrative Health Center in Greenwood Village, CO.
www.Pure-Acupuncture-Denver.com