How many times did you hear your parents telling you: “And what’s the magic word?” when asking for or receiving something at a younger age. Why did they do this? Probably to teach us the good manners but here is what they really taught us: Happiness.
Do you tend to say “Thank You” spontaneously out of repeated social mechanism, or do you do it meaningfully and mindfully: with your heart and while present to yourself?
Well, how about you turn this into a mindful habit?
What would it change? You’ll bring awareness and consciousness to every single moments you are enjoying: it can be someone giving you a compliment, a beautiful sunset or the joy of serving someone.
Mindfully saying Thank You after each moment, or even before going to bed while reflecting on your day, is highly beneficial on all three main aspects of our self: mind, body and spirit.
Here is how.
By bringing more awareness, you start building on gratitude that will become second nature.
What gratitude brings? Well, according to Sara Algoe, Ph. D. of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “It turns out that there’s an emotion that happens to be really amazing at helping us solve this essential human problem of survival. And that emotion is gratitude.”
Think about one thing you are grateful for. Yes. Take a few seconds now to think about.
Did it bring you a smile on your face? Right? Exactly my point: gratitude sets you in this happy mode.
And the happy benefits of smiling are numerous and contagious!
Look what happens when you smile: people tend to do so.
So how do you bring a smile on someone else’s face? For example, by showing them your gratitude while saying Thank You. It can take different forms: a service, a written note, a text message, a voice message, gift, a hug, …
And what happy mode enables us to get? Happier relationships which in turns leads to a better health.
Look at the correlation established by a Harvard Study between our health and the satisfaction level of our relationships with others, that Robert Waldinger highlighted in his TedTalk titled “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” in 2015.
“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old,” said Waldinger in a popular TED Talk. “It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”
Stop wasting time to postpone your happiness and a healthy life.
Grab a pen, open your message app, or send a e-card now to the person that comes to your mind right away when it comes to being grateful for anything they might have done, today or in the past. And remind yourself to thank yourself as well. Feel gratitude for who you are, what your amazing body, mind and spirit team does for you to live this life.
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Be Well, Be Happy, Be You,
Delphine