As a teenager, I remember my mother reminding me to have a grateful heart. I would grumble in response and complain under my breath. I hated when she said that. At that moment, being grateful felt insincere. It was the last thing I wanted to do.

As an adult, I still feel this way some days. It is easier to focus on all the things going wrong—on all the things I am “not grateful” for, rather than shifting my focus and reminding myself that there is still room for gratitude in my life. Having a grateful heart can be the last thing I want to do.

Let’s just get the truth out there. Many days, we don’t feel like being grateful. We know the research and the benefits of gratitude—it improves our overall well-being, increases happiness, reduces depression and stress, increases self-esteem, and improves our physical health—but we resist anyway.

When life feels hard, we feel justified in our resistance to gratitude.

We are not wired to feel grateful. Our human nature focuses on solutions to problems, things we want to “fix,” and situations we can’t control. Even our prayers lack gratitude and tend mostly to be made up of requests.

Despite this, adopting a sincere and grateful heart on a daily basis is life-altering. There is so much power in digging down deep to see all the good in our circumstances and spending time reflecting on those blessings.

Gratitude shifts everything.

One of the reasons gratitude can have such a powerful impact on our lives is because our brain only has so much power to focus its attention. It cannot easily focus on both the positive and the negative simultaneously. Recent research on brain activity showed how gratitude actually changes the blood flow in the brain, increasing dopamine –the feel-good hormone- which results in a wide range of positive effects, such as improving sleep, decreasing depression, and fewer aches and pains.

Gratitude serves as a catalyst for transforming our relationships, our circumstances, and our view of the world.

Next time you want to resist gratitude, remember these three powerful effects it can have on your life.

3 Ways Gratitude Will Change Your Life

1. Gratitude improves our relationships.

Our tendency is to fixate on our children and spouse’s negative behavior and attributes. This often leads us to “fortune telling”—worrying that one of our children will become like lazy Uncle Harry or our spouse will never change ______(fill in the blank). We find ourselves discontented. We are prone to focus on what they aren’t doing rather than all that they actually are doing.

When we commit to having a heart of gratitude, it breathes new life into our relationships. We shift our focus entirely. Instead of dwelling on the problems, weaknesses, mistakes, and every other negative aspect of our relationships, we can intentionally set our minds on zeroing in on all the positive aspects about them. When we do this, the energy in our home changes from feeling negative, critical, unwelcoming, and heavy- to joyful, uplifting, encouraging, and positive. The whole family feels it. We begin to look for ways we can show appreciation for one another. We catch our children doing things that we tend not to notice. We appreciate our spouse for who he is rather than who he is not.

2. Gratitude changes the way we view our circumstances.

Gratitude helps us to accept what we cannot change. When we face challenges and situations that are out of our control, gratitude brings us to a place of surrender. Rather than holding on so tightly to the way we want things to be, we are able to release it with an open mind. We begin to let go of our death grip that holds all our anxiety, worry, and stress and we then enter into a space of acceptance- and peace can come from doing just that. We intentionally invite new possibilities into our circumstances that never existed before because we have finally allowed ourselves to shift our view to discover there is more than what we were focusing on.

As a result of practicing gratitude, our change in attitude shifts our circumstances profoundly.

3. Gratitude changes the way we view the world.

Everyday life offers unlimited opportunities to be grateful. These opportunities are around us all the time, and it is easy to take them for granted and allow them to pass us by unnoticed.

I have a 6-month-old granddaughter. When I am with her, I experience the world with new eyes. The other day, I took her outside in the rain. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she looked all around—up at the sky, watching the rainfall, studying the pitter-patter as it dropped to the ground. I was filled with gratitude for the beauty of that moment.

Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present moment. It pulls us into what we are experiencing right now and consequently fades the rest of our stressful circumstances into the background. When we soak in the special gifts of the moment we are in, this helps us feel a sense of appreciation that we could have missed if we had been too stressed out to really immerse ourselves in it.

Think about some of the extraordinary miracles we experience moment by moment throughout our day… They are countless!

…the breath that gives us life, the wind in the trees and the leaves blowing in the breeze, our child’s smile, the sound of laughter, music, a baby’s cry, holding a loved one’s hand, the smell of freshly cut grass, no two sunsets ever the same, things that never change—the sunrise and the sunset, the sun by day, the stars and moon by night, all radiating their light, the miracle of every intricate flower, the smell of soap, the taste of water on your lips, the variety and brilliant colors around us every day that there are too many to name. Our modern conveniences—ice cubes, clean water, the feeling of taking a shower, electricity, computers, cell phones, transportation, relatives that may challenge us but are always there, a conversation with a friend, tasting a piece of chocolate, watching the clouds in the sky, or the simple peace that comes from sitting in complete stillness.

Embracing gratitude daily helps me participate more fully in life by tuning in to the extraordinary miracles of that moment. It shifts my perspective on the relationships I have and helps me truly embrace all the blessings in each one. Gratitude eases my stress because when I put my thoughts in this positive focus, I can realize all the good that surrounds me every day. Being grateful guides me in magnifying the beauty in my life and minimizing the burdens and struggles that, in comparison, are so much fewer than all I have to be thankful for!

Conclusion:

The best news of all? Gratitude grows!

The more you start looking for things to be grateful for, the more your brain starts looking for more things to be grateful for.

Next time when you feel stuck, anxious, or powerless to change your present circumstances, try gratitude. It’s okay if you don’t feel like it. Try it anyway.

Practice gratitude to transform the way you feel about your relationships, circumstances, and your view of life.

Gratitude will profoundly impact how we feel and experience life when we stop resisting and choose gratitude daily.

Oh, beautiful Mom, I hope you, too, can be mindful and intentional about finding ALL the reasons you can be grateful and practice gratitude regularly. I promise you’ll notice a difference in your lives, your relationships, your parenting, your stress level, your precious kids, and ultimately—your entire family!