1. Stop Thinking Your Way Out of Overthinking

We cannot think our way out of overthinking. We cannot force our mind to stop thinking negative thoughts. And we can’t undo anxiety if we are anxiously trying to get rid of it. But we can cultivate a more positive mindset. 

When we feel low, combining wisdom with calm brings about heightened state of presence. We all have a higher intelligence within us. It reveals itself when we are relaxed and joyful. 

2. Practice Gratitude

It’s important to remember: practicing gratitude, thinking of the things that we’re grateful for, is a symptom of a grateful mindset. And when we are truly grateful, we see blessings everywhere around us. Coming up with the list becomes very easy to do.

If our list is made up of things that can be taken away from us or that we can lose, then that is also not practicing true gratitude. Because true gratitude can be for life itself, for breath in my body, for literally anything that we have. If we cannot see, then sound is a miracle. If we cannot hear, then sight is a blessing. We have infinite things to be grateful for in every single moment.

We just don’t know how to really look, because we’re not really feeling gratitude. We’re trying to force it by starting with those symptoms of gratitude. And sometimes, starting with the symptoms can really help us to create that habit, to get us to start looking for things to be grateful for. But what we really need to do, so that it becomes natural, is watch for the things that make gratitude hard. And that is jealousy and greed.

3. Don’t Let Your Desires Turn into Greed

When our cravings and desires get carried away into greed, that’s when we really need to become mindful of these cravings that have gotten out of hand, and start to just be where we are, instead of trying to get somewhere else or get something else. When we make being present a habit, gratitude comes naturally. Because we are no longer creating a mindset where this moment needs to be escaped, or something is not good enough about me or this moment.

And that is the main reason we find it difficult to feel gratitude, we feel blocked, and we feel we need to force it. So simply recognizing that desire for anything in life, whether it’s possessions, or to be somewhere else, or for something to be different, the more we accept, embrace, and love this moment, the more gratitude becomes second nature.

4. Don’t Force Yourself to Think Happy Thoughts

When we are feeling unhappy, forcing ourselves to think happy thoughts is only going to remind us how unhappy we are. And we’re going to feel fake. And when it doesn’t work, we’re going to feel like failures.

So instead of trying to be happy, try to accept unhappiness. Try to love whatever emotion is there. Because that’s what we need when we’re unhappy, we need love. We need acceptance. We don’t need someone, or ourselves, to force us to be happy when we are not happy. That will not make us happy. But love and acceptance is the key.

And no matter what we are feeling, we can feel love about it. We can make peace with our unhappiness. And this naturally makes us happy.

5. Focus on the Root Cause, Not the Symptoms

We focus too much, as a society, on the symptoms instead of the root causes. And our present moment emotions and thoughts are conditioned based on our past. So we can’t just focus on changing what is being expressed,we have to deal with the root cause. And that root cause is something in our past that we have not made peace with, or accepted, and that we still have anger towards, and maybe even hatred towards.

And the antidote to hate is love. We can smile to our pain, our physical pain, we can smile to our back pain or our disability. And just like we would want a best friend to be there for us, who may not always be there for us, we can be that friend. We can love those parts of us we hate the most. We can love those worst moments. Simply because those are the areas that need love the most.

Because love is the healing that will take place. Love is the power that will transform every emotion. No matter what we feel, we can accept it, because it is there. And so, to resist and reject what is happening is a form of insanity. To simply accept what is happening is to embrace reality.

6. Approach Looking at Yor Life with Excitement, Curiosity And Exploration

How we approach anything in our lives determines how we feel about everything in our lives. If we approach our unhappiness with craving and desire, we will only get further from happiness. If we approach looking at ourselves and our lives with joy and excitement, and curiosity and exploration, then we have that explorer’s courage and spirit, and confidence, that comes from exploring what we were too scared to look at, what gave us too much anger and anxiety to feel.

It is really how we respond to what happens that determines our life, never what is happening. And we always have a choice in how we respond. Most of the time, we respond impulsively and unconsciously. And so, we just need to spend some time with intentional space carved out in our day to look, and to sit with our greatest sources of pain, and actively choose to love and accept them.

And that light of consciousness will outshine any darkness.

7. Try Not to Bring Yesterday on Someone or Something

To understand gratitude, we have to look at little children. They are not used to anything, and so they take nothing for granted. Everything is new and exciting. But at some point, we humans decide we’ve seen it all, and it’s not so great.

We can recognize that tendency, to forget how much we love something or someone. We can notice how the “new car smell” wears off very quickly, and that we get used to just about anything. So we need to make it a daily practice to see things as new every day, to never bring yesterday onto someone or something. To always be fully present, connecting with the world around us as it is, not as we labeled it yesterday.

When we actually connect with the world around us, we find that it is amazing, it is wonderful, and it is as incredible as every little child sees. But we struggle to let go of our past, of what we saw yesterday and what we expect today.

8. Move the Conditioned Mind Aside

If we notice when we’re expecting too much, when we’re demanding too much, when modern conveniences that no one had throughout history have a slight delay or glitch, and we notice the anger or frustration building up simply because we got used to everything working smoothly, once we become aware of that, and we leave that baggage behind so we can be present, we’ll notice we are surrounded by very beautiful, cool, soft, amazing, colorful, artistic, musical things all around us.

We just have to get out of our own way. We have to move the conditioned mind aside, all of those other people’s opinions that told us what we should or shouldn’t like. And we should start to notice how there is so much to love all around us. That is the key to developing natural gratitude: where we are naturally in awe of everything around us, where we can’t find anything to complain about, and we are just thankful, every moment.

I’m just grateful that this magical universe exists, with all of the illusion of separateness, that we get to explore and play in for the entirety of our lives.