Gratitude and Happiness

Hey guys!

I hope that you've all been well, it's been a while!

Today, I read this blog post from Marc and Angel who I love to read because their posts are always about life truths that can really change your life. They're simply and utterly amazing.

What it reminded me about was the fact that being thankful for everything that you have can make you such a happy person. This is often because you can find ways of taking the goods from what could be on the surface a bad situation and it can leave you feeling so much more fulfilled because you've taken from it rather than let it take from you. It's wonderful!

Being thankful also makes you happy because it makes you realise that you have so much right in this moment. For many of us, we take a lot of things for granted and only stop to be thankful when those things are taken away from us. This can include our health as well as our wealth but also the people that we have around us.

It's become so important to me to try and be thankful today, in the now, because quite often things we have today can become things we had, like friendships or any close friends. People can slip through our fingers because we're too busy looking the other way or worrying when there's so much now to see and be thankful for. Here and now. Not yesterday, not a week ago, not tomorrow either. Now.

So, I challenge you, stop for five minutes everyday and just be thankful for what you have and what's happened to you today. You wouldn't believe how much a bit of reflection can add to your joy and leave you feeling so much more content than you could've believed to be possible. I've tried to do this by both daily journaling as well as daily blogging on my side Tumblr blog everyday through summer. If that's something you'd be interested in reading, please do go and check it out! I would encourage you to do the same, even if it's an appreciation tweet or just a moment out of your day when you become truly present.

It makes all the difference.

I hope that you all have a wonderful time doing what you're doing and I hope to speak to you very soon indeed!

A Secret to Happiness - Soul Pancake!

Hey guys! I hope that you're literally having the bestest days ever!

I watched the most beautiful study today from Soul Pancake's very own The Science of Happiness series. It has been scientifically proven that an overall contributor to how happy you are is how much gratitude you show.

Hence the video: 'An Experiment in Gratitude' 

What they did was got a bunch of volunteers and got them to take a test which would tell the experts how happy they were. They were then asked to write a letter to one of the biggest inspirations in their life and why they'd been inspired so much.

Then came the twist; they were asked to call the people they'd talked about and read what they'd written to them. Just imagine if you were asked to do that yourself! It's the most beautiful video to watch and I would thoroughly recommend it!

To come to what this showed - after they'd spoken to the person or for those for whom this wasn't possible too - they all took a test which was pretty much identical to that of the first but worded differently enough that they didn't realise. What they found was that those who hadn't been able to talk to those who they'd written about but who'd still written a letter showed between a 2% and 4% increase in happiness. Cool beans.

What was even more interesting was that amongst those who had spoken to that special person had shown between a 4% and a 19% increase in happiness - even more intriguingly, those who had the highest by the end were often those who had started off at the lowest.

Moral of the story? Expressing your gratitude will make you a happier person and quite often, the worse you feel, the larger impact it'll have. How freaking awesome is that?!

Just the fact that this has been scientifically proven just made me the most joyful human being today and I'd honestly love to try this. Sharing what you love about the world and for the people that impact your experience of it, directly or less so and showing your gratitude for it. So incredibly beautiful. I'm never not in awe of how awesome life is.

In terms of gratitude, I just want to take a moment to be thankful for the fact that this post here that your brain is processing, is my 100th post. That's a pretty cool number! Just having the time and capacity to do something I enjoy and love is just phenomenal so thank you thank you thank you! Much happiness :D

I hope that you guys all have the most wonderful time ahead, in the present moment and all of them to come and that hopefully, I get to speak to you soon!