What is the difference between someone who is full of joy, has a zest for life, and always seems to have a smile on their face, and someone who is grumpy, grouchy, and a total drain to be around?

The primary factor is gratefulness. Gratefulness has the power to change any situation. More precisely, gratitude has the power to change the way we experience any situation. Being grateful may not change your circumstances, but it does change you, and that makes all the difference.

Gratitude has the power to change the very way we experience life. It can neutralize negative emotions and enable us to learn incredibly valuable lessons even in the midst of challenging circumstances.

First and foremost, gratitude is a way of living. It is a state of being in which you open yourself up to receive good things. It is a posture of openness, receptiveness, and willingness to receive things that are very good.

Gratitude is not a one-time event where you simply say, “Thank you.” It’s an entire way of being in which you joyfully receive good things and give thanks for those good things.

Additionally, gratitude encompasses all things. Everything in life happens for a reason, and in each circumstance, there are valuable things for us to learn. These valuable things help us advance in life, primarily in character.

Gratefulness enables us to see just how many good things we have in our lives. On the flip side, when we’re not regularly grateful, we become discontent and unhappy with the way things are going.

The opposite of gratefulness is:

• Complaining
• Discontentment
• Envy
• Anger
• Frustration
• Thanklessness
• Unhappiness

Because you attract more of what you focus on, gratefulness results in you attracting more good things into your life. Being grateful puts you into a particular state of being in which you attract more of the very things that you’re grateful for.

On the other hand, if you’re constantly:  speaking negatively, complaining, envious of others, and moaning about all the things you don’t have … you’ll attract even more of that into your life.

The good news is that you can’t simultaneously be grateful and be in any of these negative states. You could say that gratefulness is exclusive. It expands and doesn’t make room for anything else. 

With gratefulness comes great power. And the more you cultivate gratefulness, the more power you’ll experience in your life.

What can you do to cultivate gratefulness?

1. Keep a gratitude journal.
2. Recite gratitude affirmations.
3. Constantly say, “thank you.”
4. Always find reasons to be grateful.
5. Develop an abundance mindset.
6. Live in the moment.
7. Regularly write thank you notes.