When you are handling a challenging situation, it could be challenging to find the positive.

​This is where being thankful can help. It does not mean that you are thankful for the problems, but as an alternative, you need to be showing appreciation for the positive things that are taking place in your life, even though they are little.

Gratitude can help you see your present circumstance in a manner that can reduce the panic, and open up your thinking to new answers to your problems. Below are 9 ways you can engage in gratitude and begin living a happier life.

7 Tips How To Make Gratitude Part Of Your Your Life

1) Pause a second to see your world from the point of thankfulness. When you begin checking out things from the point of thankfulness you will be surprised at all of the goodness in your life that you have most likely been taking for granted.

2) Keep a gratitude journal. Keeping a gratitude journal calls for nothing greater than taking a few seconds by the end of the day and jotting down things that you are thankful for in your life. You do not even require to get a fancy notebook to start viewing the benefits.

Also Read 4 Remarkable ways in which Gratitude will change Your Life 

3) If you recognize a thing or a person in your life with an unfavorable characteristic, change that characteristic in your thoughts to a more favorable one. For instance, if you relate your work meeting room as the cold room, begin thinking about it as the meeting room with the bird's-eye view instead.

FREE gratitude planner page download

4) To practice and gain from gratitude, you also need to engage in humility. Humility is described as being humble and respectful. Spend some time to check out where you can accommodate humbleness into your life.

5) Each day, give a minimum of one good word. This can either be directly or simply by talking about your gratitude of anything in your life. This may be as basic as saying, "I enjoy how quiet it is in the early morning.".

6) When you end up in a tight spot, ask yourself what you can learn? Contemplate when you reflect on the circumstance, with no feeling, what you will be thankful for.

​Also Read 5 advantages Of Maintaining A Gratitude Journal

7) Make an oath not to criticize, whine, or malicious talk for a full week. If you slide, rally your self-discipline and always keep moving on. Make the effort to observe the amount of energy you were investing daily on unfavorable thoughts.

You do not need any specific tools to engage in gratitude. All you need to have to do is make use of your mind and your heart.

Also Read 5 Tips For Growing Gratitude And Increasing Your Happiness

​Most of us have never seen the Himalayas, climbed in the Andes or stood next to Switzerland’s Matterhorn. But a majority of individuals and families have faced disaster, tragedy, debilitating illness, an accident or other trial, some personal mountain that at one point seemed insurmountable.

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​When Your Problem Feels Like Mt Everest
Author: Gary Sinclair

Most of us have never seen the Himalayas, climbed in the Andes or stood next to Switzerland’s Matterhorn. But a majority of individuals and families have faced disaster, tragedy, debilitating illness, an accident or other trial, some personal mountain that at one point seemed insurmountable.

People of course respond in a variety of ways. Some are immediately overwhelmed and give up. Rather than even start the climb, they give way to depression and despair uninterested in the help of friends, professionals or fellow-strugglers.

Others panic. They want to overcome but don’t know where to begin so they run from person to person, idea to idea, without a plan making little headway towards the summit.

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A third group gets angry. They spew their rage at life, God, friends, family or all of the above, furious that life has taken this precipitous turn.

While each of these responses is somewhat extreme, they are normal. They are emotions that erupt when we face a mountain that scares us because we don’t believe we have the resources to conquer it.

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​My wife Jackie and I encountered a Denali over a decade ago now when it was discovered she had stage three colon/rectal cancer. There was a tumor growing inside her and the devilish cancer cells had begun to spread. Ironically, she and I had climbed her first fourteen-thousand-foot peak in Colorado just three months before.

We now had a new mountain to climb. It took some weeks for us to figure it out, but we finally realized that we must climb her cancer mountain the same way we ascended those of granite. While climbs and climbers are unique, there remain principles that undergird any successful summit bid.

The same is true with personal mountains.

Let me discuss three of the key principles as they impacted our Mt. Cancer.

One, never climb alone. Most every experienced mountaineer will tell you that you are foolish to in high altitude by yourself. People do it, yes, but many of them die, some needlessly. During Jackie’s illness, we knew we must invite others to walk this trail with us, some being people who had faced a similar journey to ours. Others simply wanted to be there with us.

Two, climb one part of the trail at a time. Get through the next switchback before worrying about the next one. On a mountain trail, we would give each other candy once we reached the place on the mountain where we reached our next waypoint. In the same way, as we started her cancer journey, we focused on the next doctor visit, the chemo, surgery or radiation treatment rather than think about what might be down the road.

No, we couldn’t perfectly excise from our minds the possible future implications, but we became pretty good at keeping them at arm’s length until later. The mountain didn’t disappear but we could face it more and without unnecessary, unhelpful distractions

Three, be honest about your mountain. Some natural mountains have more snow and ice than others; some are steeper; some have false summits. In the same way our personal trails will vary from those others hike. We must face the difficulty of our mountain and not look the other way or try to make it seem easier than it is.​

The good news is that there is also hope for you to conquer personal mountain if you’ll learn from those who climb the big peaks. Your ascent can be a long and arduous one but remember: the view from the top is worth it!

​Bio: Gary Sinclair is an author, leadership coach, speaker and avid climber/hiker. He has summitted nine fourteen thousand foot mountains and hiked with his wife Jackie in beautiful places like Yosemite, Alaska, Colorado, the Canadian Rockies and the Alps. He has an ongoing passion to help those who are hurting face life challenges that seem beyond their ability to conquer. He and his wife currently live in the Indianapolis, Indiana area. His website is: http://www.neverquitclimbing.com and he has recently written a book entitled, "Never Quit Climbing," available at Amazon.com.

As positive thinking affects almost every situation in your life's, how can one begin incorporating it into your life?

1. Do yoga or meditate.
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Clearing your mind to allow you to focus your thoughts can bring your attention to what you need to be focusing on.

2. Look for the positive.

Be loving toward yourself and to others. Focus on your strengths and assets. Maybe you felt nervous when going to a particular event, but then you received lots of positive comments from others who were happy to see you.

3. Smile.

Force yourself to smile. It really does help to change your mood. And it relieves stress too.

4. Surround yourself with positive people.

Get away from the negative people in your life. Talk to people who are positive.


5. Halt negative thoughts immediately.

When you catch yourself with negative thoughts, give yourself permission to stop it. Instead of thinking, “I can’t do that. I’m not talented enough,” say “I can do that. I am just as talented as anyone else.”

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6. Don’t play the victim.

You are responsible for creating your life. If you don’t like the situation, change it. 7. List five things you are grateful for at this moment.

Being grateful is a form of positive thinking.

8. Be nice to yourself.

Treat yourself with respect. Treat yourself the same way you would treat someone else. Would you call someone else names like ugly, fat or loser? Probably not. Then don’t do it to yourself.

9. No one is perfect. Move on.

Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Learn a lesson from each of them and then move on.

​10. Learn to accept compliments. Build your self-esteem, self- image and confidence.

Take the compliment as it is meant to be given; as a gift. Compliments can help you build your self-image and self- confidence.​

11. Focus on what's possible.
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Get rid of the negative words like “can’t.” Remind yourself that you don’t need others approval for your accomplishments. Focus on your own capabilities and what is possible.

Incorporating positive thoughts into your life can change your future. You can become happier, healthier and more successful if you believe you can.

​Also read: How To Encourage Positivity Around You