Gratitude: A step towards a Positive Mindset

I keep talking about positivity. And a friend of mine recently asked me, how on earth one simply “acquires” the mindset of positivity. How do you simply “choose” to be positive. Chances are I will keep spiraling back to this, because the way I see it, this is key to becoming happy (really who could have guessed that?).

I am trying to elaborate on actionable steps to have a more positive mindset, to remind oneself of the good things on a regular basis. The first thing that comes to my mind here is a gratitude journal or a gratitude log. In essence we write one line starting with “I am grateful for…” at the end of every day. This may be in a designated journal or in your calendar. I would recommend actually writing it down on paper, rather than typing it in some form. Because what we actually wrote down we remember better.

But why would we do this? Where is the benefit? Why being grateful? Well… because this is exactly how we can actually switch into more positive thinking. Because when we are grateful, when we take the time to think about what was good in on that day, we start thinking “This is something I can write in my gratititude log” tonight. And that is the point, where we start remembering the good things in our daily lives.

But what if the world around us is too dark for us to see the positive. What if we cannot find something we want to be grateful for? I find that this can have two causes: Either we cannot see the good things, or we think we can only be grateful for the mindblowing things. And that is an issue. Why not be grateful for the little things? Those little things, that make our lives better, day after day. I once wrote into my diary: “I am grateful for my Google Calendar.” No kidding. The other reason is a bit trickier. Not bein able to see the good things has a lot to do with not wanting to see them. Which is a whole other issue that I have not found a solution to yet.