How Being Grateful Can Bring you Happiness

Julie Murphy • February 24, 2022

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Gratitude is an immensely powerful way to create happiness and wealth into our lives. Positive psychology has even shown how being grateful impacts us from a neurological perspective. It’s been scientifically proven to rewire neural pathways, enhance feelings of wellbeing, boost physical and mental health and improve our relationships with others.

So many of us are in pursuit of happiness and wealth and can easily get distracted by the ‘doing’ and leading with that push, masculine energy. The act of being grateful for what we have right now in this moment however, is a step we can often forget.

In this article, I’m going to offer some tips on how being grateful can lead to more happiness and what I like to call ‘Real Wealth’ - a profound sense of freedom in every area of your life.

Gratitude improves health - and therefore wealth!

We can’t be happy in a state of dis-ease and poor health. It also makes it hard to attract wealth into our lives if our health is suffering. Gratitude has been shown to positively change our health in ways that sometimes surpasses even modern medicine. Being grateful elevates our emotional state and our immune systems. It puts the body and mind into a place of joy and contentment and lowers cortisol, which is often at the core of a huge number of health conditions.

So although the idea of gratitude can sound woo-woo or like a cliché, it’s far more potent than we give it credit for! When you feel good on the inside, this creates more expansion to go after your financial goals and create radical changes in all parts of your life.

How to practice gratitude

Practising gratitude doesn’t have to be complicated or overwhelming. One of the most effective ways is to create some kind of daily practice where you take time to be grateful for 3 things.

Some ideas are a conversation you had with a loved one, the bed you sleep in at night or a meal you ate today. The key is to really feel into it. Harness those feelings of love, joy and appreciation as this is where the magic happens!

You could also create a financial gratitude practice and think about ways that you’re grateful for your money that’s coming in and the money that’s going out. So many of us become stressed when we have a bill to pay but what if you reframed this? How about you thank the bill that allows you to have warmth and hot water in your home? Or that gets you from place to place in your car? You could also be grateful for how you’re choosing to seek out more financial education. This doesn’t have to cost money either – I have a huge selection of videos on my YouTube channel that can be a valuable part of the financial path you’re on. Be grateful for the resources available to you!

This simple act of shifting your perspective on your financial situation, quickly puts you into the energy of abundance rather than lack!

Use gratitude to reconsider what you actually desire

As humans, we have a tendency to think we want everything we don’t have. The latest car, designer wardrobe, an impressive retirement portfolio, a promotion at a job that we work tirelessly at every day. Oftentimes, these are material things or labels that we believe we want because others have them or we think that by owning these items ourselves, we’ll feel more validated and worthy.

Of course, if you genuinely have a desire to attain any of these things, that’s great! But being grateful for what you have right now, in this moment, and for the smaller things that can be neglected, can really help create a better perspective on your pursuit of happiness and what you want to create more of in the future to feel truly satisfied on a heart and soul level.

It’s the quality of our relationships, the state of our health, doing work that lights us up, experiences, feeling fantastic about the flow of our money - it’s these things that practising gratitude can highlight. Ultimately, gratitude can be the perfect antidote for that feeling of needing "more."

Be grateful for everything you spend money on

Gratitude is also an important piece of money mindfulness. You might be asking how being grateful can tangibly create more wealth? Well, this is how! To create wealth we sometimes need to assess our expenses and the way in which we’re choosing to spend money. We can easily go into autopilot and buy things out of habit or because it’s easy. Try spending a day immersing yourself in feelings of gratitude for everything that you purchase. Notice what things you go to spend money on that perhaps don’t seem as important when you really take time to think about how it adds value to your day or life.

This practice can really highlight what things bring you true joy – perhaps your morning latte at your favourite coffee shop really does make you happy and is part of a ritual that enriches the rest of your day. If so, keep doing that! But maybe there’s another financial choice that you’ve noticed you feel a little indifferent to or that doesn’t make you feel good. Could you make a different choice from an empowered and considered place by choosing not to purchase that?

By harnessing the power of gratitude for these everyday things can help you re-evaluate the flow of your money. You can also then be grateful for where you’re choosing to save money and how that is contributing to your financial future!

The above ways are some ideas on how being grateful should be a key part of your pursuit of happiness. It’s one of the most powerful and potent ways of creating the idea of ‘real wealth’ in your life that I love to talk about! It doesn’t cost a dime and only needs to take five minutes out of your day for you to see the results for yourself.

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