We all want to have a happy life and one way to ensure that you live a happier life is through contentment. If you are contented with what you already have, you will worry less and things will be much easier and simpler.
How do you become contented? If you want to learn contentment, you have to start with knowing what you have and then being grateful for these. To do this, here’s an exercise that will help you know what possessions you have and be truly grateful for them.
This is an exercise that requires quite a bit of time, so make sure you have free time of at least 30 minutes to an hour. Find a place that allows you to think clearly, such as your bedroom, balcony, or your kitchen. Then when you’ve picked a good spot, bring along a pen and paper and take a seat to start the exercise.
- First, you need to think about things in your life that make you happy and you are thankful for having. Write down what comes to mind and keep going until you can’t think of anything else. Remember that you shouldn’t fill this list with material possessions. You may point out some material items, but focus more on the non-material ones such as skills that you have, people that you’re thankful to be part of your life, and particular events in your life, positive or negative, that you’re glad to have gone through.
- Then, go through each item again and think of why you are thankful for this. Write each reason clearly beside each item on your list.
- Next, once you’re done doing the second step for all entries, do another review but this time, internalize each reason. Read the item, then the reason why you are glad to have that, and then take a short pause and just internalize what you read. You can even think of past experiences with that item and what made you so happy you have it in your life.
After the exercise, you’ll be filled with much gratefulness and feel much happier already. Now, knowing what you are grateful for and being truly thankful for these is just the first step in becoming contented. And doing this activity once is not enough as you may forget this feeling and the things you wrote on your list. Hence, it’s best to do this exercise every day or at least once a week. You need to be reminded of what you are grateful for and you need to allow yourself to experience being thankful every once in a while.
To repeat the exercise, you can develop a habit that you can include in your daily routines. You can either do the activity ever morning or every night before you go to bed. You can also change the way you do it if you prefer. For example, you can do away with listing the items and just think of them. Take note though, that listing them down makes it easier to remember as you can go through it again and see how many things you’re grateful for. If you like listing them down, you could even write them in a journal or diary for better organization. To make it even easier to accomplish, set a minimum number of things that you’ll come up with such as at least three or five daily.
This exercise will help you learn to become grateful and make you aware of your blessings, hence, you start getting feelings of contentment because there’s so much to be happy about. Remember that this is just the first step, so you may need to do other things to become more contented such as practicing to focus on what you need as compared to just getting what you want. You may need to plan out how you’ll become more contented with life, so research on other methods such as this and formulate the best plan of action.
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