The Power of Gratitude, and Small Things

I have been practicing an elite athlete routine for almost a decade now.

The most important takeaway I have from that decade is that everything is made through consistency.

Consistency trumps everything. Not one single thing is more powerful than consistency. 

I have always been a really impatient guy (And I still am to some extend). But when I realised the power of small actions every single day instead of searching for big leaps every once and while. My mindset changed.

I have six things I will do every single day. And these six things is so stupidly easy to do, that there is no excuse not to do them. If I really want it. I can do all six of them in less than 10 minutes.

At the moment the six things are these:

1. Write 50 words on this blog
2. Meditate for 1 minute
3. Come up with 1 article topic for this blog
4. Read 2 pages of a book
5. Stretch for 1 minute
6. Acknowledge 1 thing that you are grateful for

And I have a 7th one. But this one does not require me to do anything. I can check this off if I haven’t spent any money that day.

I’m doing this with a free app called Loop – Habit Tracker.

After I have installed the app, I can make some widgets to the starter screen, where I can check them off as I’m doing them.

The most powerful of them might also be the easiest one. It is the daily gratitude. If we don’t acknowledge the things we already have, we will never do it.

Happiness is not around the next corner, purchase, investment or traveled to. 

If we expect happiness to arrive when we final reach some imaginary milestone we will be in for a huge disappointment.

When we start to embrace the stuff we all ready have, and start to be thrilled about living in the most luxury time of man kind. Where more and more people have a decent place to live and a super market packed with organic foods within five minutes on a bike.

For a couple of years ago I stumbled across how fasting can be healthy for us humans. And until that day I think that I have had breakfast, lunch and dinner for 99 % of my life. Isnt that insane?! I never in my entire life had to miss a meal.

No matter how happy we are, there will be a person out there who has way less friends, less food, less stuff and less money, and still being happier than we are.

But if we start to practice a daily gratitude of that prosperous world the majority of people live in. We can be happier within seconds.

This is one of the main reasons why I don’t buy to many things. Because I know that 99 % of the time it will not serve how I feel.

Where I like to splurge is to buy a good friend a take-away pizza and a bottle of wine, and then have a conversation that sounds like this:

“You are the bomb!”, I will tell my friend with red wine teeth.

“No! You are the bomb!”, says my friend while he is pouring another glass of wine.

And this conversation will loop until the early morning.

That to me is happiness.