Gratitude means being thankful for your blessings

Feeling Grateful

What Is Being Grateful?

To understand how being grateful is itself beneficial, it’s important to understand what I mean by ‘being grateful’.

When a person is grateful for something, they believe they benefitted from what they are grateful for and they appreciate having received that benefit.  The following postulates about gratitude support the idea that gratitude benefits those who are greatful.

How Gratitude Benefits the Grateful

The following postulates about gratitude support the idea that gratitude benefits those who are greatful.

  1. You’re grateful when you feel appreciation for something you believe benefitted you. Being in a state of gratitude is being in a positive state.  And being in a positive state is preferable to being in a negative state. It just feels better, and the better we feel, the more likely we are to take action to create more benefit for ourself or others.
  2. All things being equal, the more gratitude a person experiences, the more often they are in a positive state. Being in a positive state more often develops an expectation of being in a positive state more often.  Having that expectation is part of being self-confident. Therefore being grateful contributes to being self-confident, which motivates taking constructive action to achieve your goals and live your dreams.
  3. Being in a positive state, all things being equal, is being in a state where your energy is available for your use, as opposed to your energy being blocked and unavailable.  Achieving your goals and living your dreams requires you to expend energy in taking constructive action. Since being grateful is a positive state, when you are grateful, your energy is available to you to take constructive action.
  4. When a person is grateful, all things being equal, they are pleasant to be around.  Why? When they are grateful, they are in a  positive state. People prefer being around others in a positive state rather than in a negative state. If you’re a grateful person, you tend to be pleasant–someone others want to be around.
  5. A person can’t be in both a positive state and a negative state at the same time.  Being grateful and reflecting on all that one is grateful for is being in a positive state.  As long as you’re feeling grateful, you are in a positive state that can dissolve a negative state.
  6. By expressing gratitude for their benefits to their children, parents teach their children to be grateful and to express their gratitude.  When a child is grateful and expresses their gratitude to their parents, the parents feel pride in their children and gratified that their children have learned to be grateful.  The pride a parent feels when their child expresses gratitude benefits the parent.
  7. When you’re worrying about the future–what could go wrong, and what the negative consequences could be, you are putting yourself in a negative state.  By recounting all that you are grateful for, you remind yourself of all that has worked out in your favor.  In reminding yourself of all that has benefitted you, you are more likely to replace worry, a negative state, with the positive state of gratitude.
  8. By being in a state of gratitude, recalling the benefits of all that you have accomplished through hard work, you contribute to feelings of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-respect.

I hope you recognize that being grateful is beneficial and as such, can put you in a positive, resourceful state of mind.  Parents who teach their children about gratitude and the importance of being grateful for all the good people, experiences, and things in their lives do a great service in raising them to be gracious, responsible, and well-adjusted.  In a world where there is so much rancor and malice, being sincerely grateful and expressing your gratitude can help dissolve the nastiness and resentment.