TIP ONE – GRATITUDE ART ☀️
Did you know it takes 5 positive thoughts to counter 1 negative thought?
Practicing gratitude is proven to be one of the most effective ways of cultivating joy and increasing our overall mental strength and resilience. It allows us to lean into all of the good things that are happening around us that we may not naturally notice in the moment.
We are hardwired to look for negatives in situations because from an evolutionary perspective doing so allowed us to survive. This survival mechanism does not always serve us in the same way now though, which is where gratitude practices come in.
If you already have a gratitude practice but struggle to commit to thinking or writing what you’re thankful for regularly, you could try drawing it out once a week instead. This makes the task fun, playful, and potentially more sustainable. The more you draw what you’re grateful for the more things you can think of. By doing this you’re also left with something to refer back to when life gets hard and its easy to loose perspective of all the good things surrounding you.
Like with anything, the more you commit to this practice and do this regularly, the more likely you are to notice results.
You can choose to draw just one thing you’re grateful for and have that take up the entire page, or you can draw multiple things. You can even draw a pie chart of the things you’re grateful for if you’re feeling a little less creative. How you approach this task is completely up to you!
So, what are you grateful for today? Think about the little things. Favourite hour of the day? A memory that always makes you smile.
Tag us @mindfitnewzealand in your gratitude art! We’d love to see what you come up with!
A gentle reminder:
While adopting a gratitude practice is beneficial, gratitude should not be a replacement for what we’d rather not face or used to dismiss our struggles. Gratitude is not an escape plan to stop us from feeling the emotions we’ve decided we “shouldn’t” feel, nor is it a method for achieving instant happiness. You should still give yourself permission to process all emotions, the uncomfortable and the pleasant, because they’re all important. Gratitude is a practice that merely compliments this work.
Remember it’s important to feel. It’s human to feel. You need to feel to heal.
You can’t avoid negative experiences altogether, but you can about train your brain to appreciate the positive experiences when they happen and take the time to focus on them.