Happiness Tool : Gratitude

Happiness Tool : Gratitude

The fast track to happiness is gratitude. As we

saw before, it’s impossible for love and fear to

co-exist in your brain at the same time.

Gratitude is the purest form of love, so it’s

easiest to access and works the quickest.10

One of the fastest ways to be genuinely

happier is to develop a gratitude habit. Each

night before going to sleep, list five things

you’re grateful for that day. If you’re feeling

really low and things are going terribly,

sometimes it can be hard to think of five

things, but do it anyway. At first it may even

be that you’re most grateful for things that

didn’t happen to make things worse; that’s all

right, too. Just keep at it until you have at

least five things.

This is a powerful exercise in a few different

ways. First of all, just thinking about things to

be grateful for helps you notice the good in

your life. Within a few days of starting this

habit, you will notice that it gets a lot easier to

think of five things to be grateful for, and

pretty soon you’ll be overflowing your list. I

like to insist on a minimum of five things but

keep going for as long as I feel like listing

things.