The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness. Gratitude is a state of being thankful towards the many aspects of one’s life and living. It means to count the blessings and recognise the simple joys in life and acknowledge them with a contented heart. Gratitude is a mental state of living one’s life as if each and everything is a miracle and being constantly aware of how much one is blessed with. This attitude of gratitude not only beautifies our perception towards living but also connects us to something more purposeful that is larger than oneself. Postive psychology defines gratitude as the humane way of acknowledging the many positive things of life. Psychologists have also penned down that gratitude is having a positive emotional response that we see while giving or receiving benefit from someone. (Emmons & McCullough, 2004)
Most of the time, we go about our lives overseeing the many miracles that happen in our day to day routines. And often due to lack of thoughtful perception, we are prone to fall victims of pessimism and despair. The idea of adorning gratitude in our habits, in our attitude, in our personality is to inculcate a kind of perception which acknowledges each and every blessing that comes our way. Gratitude changes our ability to perceive our life in the most fruitful way without changing anything. It helps to enrich our relationships with our near and dear ones significantly. It transforms a person into a better version of himself or herself.
When we start acknowledging the small acts of the people with whom we come in contact in our daily lives, it brings about significant positive changes. Be it the parent – child relationship or marital relationship or a colleague at work, through the attitude of gratitude we can build strong sustainable relationships.
Today the most common concern among spouses is that they don’t feel appreciated and acknowledged, and as a result conflicts arise and cause irreparable damage to the household. When husbands start appreciating their wives for all the work that they do to keep the entire household intact, and wives start being grateful for their husbands for providing selflessly for the needs of the family, how beautiful would the family unit transform and how happy would couples be in their relationship. Be it a husband or a wife, parent-child, or colleagues at work, each one needs to understand the importance of being grateful and ignore the faults and notice the many good attributes in the opposite person. This way each one can continue to hope for a beautiful and better tomorrow.
“Enjoy the little things. For one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.”
Robert Brault
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