4 Ways Noticing What’s Present Can Boost Gratitude

Explore these quick reflections as ways to bring more awareness of gratitude to any moment.

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4 Ways to Explore Gratitude

1) Notice Beauty

How do your physical senses recognize and experience beauty? Explore how you notice something lovely today. What part of that process sparks gratitude? Write or draw about that beauty.

2) Notice Creativity

Notice the good ideas you have today, in any area of your life—a new way of doing something, a response to a question somebody asks you, your perception of another person’s behavior, your understanding of something you read, a new recipe you invent. How do those good ideas feel in your body when they arise? Write or draw about that.

3) Notice Tenderness

Notice acts of tenderness between others—a couple, a parent and a child, a guardian and a pet—or bring to mind a favorite scene of tenderness from a movie, television show, or book. How do these moments resonate for you?

4) Notice Connection

How does it feel to have a new idea that might benefit your community? Have you generated energy around ideas like that and connected with others who can help move it forward? Or maybe you’ve been called in to help someone else’s new idea take off. Write or draw about how you connect to ideas that can benefit others.

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Whether you think of it as the “greatest virtue,” as Cicero did, or “social glue,” as researchers do, gratitude has the power to change your life, if you let it. Kelly Barron shares how she learned to let gratitude change her. Read More 

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Gratitude isn’t just in our head: It takes root in our heart and in our senses, for one beautiful moment…and then the next. Here are three ways to practice gratitude, from a.m. to p.m. Read More 

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