Practicing gratitude is one of the most powerful tools to increase joy and happiness in your life.

It’s also good for your health by lowering blood pressure and heart rate, and by improving sleep, resiliency, and self-esteem.  Want to learn how to do it more than once a year?  Try one of these videos:

The Science of Gratitude

 The Science of Gratitude lists simple ways to incorporate gratitude in your life by celebrating your accomplishments and by focusing on what you have rather than what you don’t have. When we cultivate an attitude of gratitude, we have better relationships with family and friends and will experience greater feelings of joy.

Nature, Beauty, Gratitude

Nature. Beauty. Gratitude. Images and poetic words are used here to express the glory of being alive. The last six minutes consist of moving photographs of things we might take for granted in everyday life. This video, with its stunning imagery, will show you the benefits of being grateful and will have a lasting positive effect on your soul. 

The Gratitude Dairies

The Gratitude Diaries shows how and why using a gratitude journal enhances what you get out of being grateful. Janice Kaplan shares that feeling happier and living in more joy are fueled by the gratitude we feel from within, not some external source. She also shares the benefits she experienced by her routine written expression of something she was grateful for each day. Some days she’d have only one thing to appreciate and other days she’d have several. Throughout the year she used the diaries to look back and be reminded of all the goodness in her life.

How to encourage gratitude in your life

Incorporating gratitude year-round will bring the greatest rewards for increased happiness, joy, and love in your life. To bring gratitude into your daily routine, follow some or all these tips:

~ before going to sleep, write down one to five things you are grateful for that day
~ take a picture (with your phone) of those things you appreciated and post them on social  media
~ make a list of five people to thank and then reach out to them, preferably in person
~ give back — your time, money, or expertise — to those who need your talents
~ commit to focusing on what you have rather than on what you want
~ pick a video on gratitude that moves you to stick with your practice of being grateful

Gratitude is the ideal way to enhance your senior years. It is my most valuable alley because it provides me the greatest amount of peace and joy, any time and any place. It inspires me to be calmer, to be more open and less judgmental, and to have a greater appreciation of my senior years.

Give it a try!

Antonia Albany is an author (Golden Grace:  Embracing the Richness of Our Later Years) and blogger at The Joy of Aging Gratefully, and gratitude expert who lives in Northern California. Her gratitude skills came in handy last year when she survived the Wine Country wildfires that decimated her community.

Photo: rawpixel for Unsplash