The Gratitude Diaries How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life by Janice Kaplan

What does it take to live with gratitude? Surprising very little, other than a dose of of awareness. Being grateful is not something new and the theory of it has been around, as far as I can tell, for aeons. Great philosophers of the past speak on why being grateful is a divine way to live life with greater fulfilment and happiness.

Janice Kaplan decided one New Years Eve that she was going to dedicate the entire year to being more grateful for everything in her life. Simply becoming more aware of all that she has and expressing gratitude for them. What she learns and discovers she share in her book and New York Times bestseller.

The book is arranged in parts focusing on a particular area of her life that she aims to improve through her gratitude’s. With an attitude of gratitude, she reveals through personal experience and research, that all areas of her life, and indeed our own, can be improved. These included as it relates to love, family, relationships, career, money, health, dealing with adversity, serving and giving back.

We as a society have grown to be so caught up in the future, driven by our goals and desires that we forget often what it means to truly live. I am guilty of this. We become so consumed by all that we want that we limit our awareness of all that we have and in doing so lessen our satisfaction for life.

I believe that a strong focus on your future is necessary. I believe in goals and vision setting. I feel that if you don’t know where it is you are going than that is a sure way to get to a place that you don’t want to be. This is living out a life with regret – one that wasn’t the true path of yourself.

I also believe however that if we run to fast through the maze of life chasing all that we desire we can become so entangled that life actually becomes less significant. There needs to be balance. If we can just stop to smell the roses, look at all the beauty that already exists in our life will we then really enjoy the journey to the point we are heading. This fills you with greater satisfaction, happiness and joy.

This is why being grateful is essential and so powerful. It is easy to be dissatisfied and stressed by all that you don’t have. In a world that tells us that the more we have the greater we will feel, it’s too easy. It is actually in poverty that we can really learn the true path to happiness. When we are without may we search more deeply and look more closely at all that we have – happiness then will surely be appreciated.

I like Janice’s approach in this book and while you may already be aware of what it means to practice gratitude’s I fell that this book will extend your knowledge further. There are many great new lessons I picked up and I really enjoy the science behind the benefits of being grateful. It helps further prove why a practice of gratitude is an essential part to all our lives.

If this book sounds of interest you can purchase The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life here.

Please leave your thoughts, comments & questions below.

Peace, passion and purpose…

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