What does gratitude day mean?

Gratitude is a feeling of recognition, a sensation that causes emotion when we know, for example, that a person has done a good deed for another. Feeling grateful is associated with a state of mind and not always for good events. Gratitude is related to moments in life and this can bring bad experiences that generate learning.

Being grateful is an exercise that should become daily among people. Having a day totally dedicated to this feeling, causes a joint reflection on the benefits of gratitude and awakens positive attitudes towards life and a general strengthening for difficult moments.

The day of gratitude

Have you ever been thankful for your day today? Read on and learn more about gratitude day, its purpose, benefits, trivia and tips on how to celebrate this date.

National and worldwide date

In Brazil, gratitude day is celebrated on January 6th, however, there is also a worldwide celebration which takes place on September 21st. Both have the same purpose: to practice gratitude for our achievements, learning and for our friends and family.

Meaning of September 21

September 21 is a date of thanks, of gratitude. A date when people should come together or in some way show their gratitude to everything around them and also for the blessings received during the past year.

How was the day of gratitude created?

The World Day of Gratitude was created as a result of an international meeting held in Hawaii on September 21, 1965. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together people who were in a positive and motivated mood and set aside one day a year to give thanks.

Story of gratitude day

Many countries around the world dedicate a special day in the calendar to gratitude. The most famous one is celebrated in the United States and Canada and is known as Thanksgiving Day. The date is a holiday and occurs on the fourth Thursday of November. Americans have been celebrating Thanksgiving Day since the early 17th century. Initially, this date was connected with giving thanks to Godby the harvest obtained in the year.

On January 6, in Brazil, we also celebrate Three Kings Day, a date when we remember the arrival of the Magi to the place where the baby Jesus was born. On this date, we also remove all the Christmas decorations and decorations. The date also honors the day of the tree, which also reminds us to be grateful to nature and for all the benefits it brings us.

What is the purpose of gratitude day?

Gratitude Day is a time dedicated to gratitude. It is a date when you can, in various ways, express your gratitude for all that you are and for all that you have, also for what happens and for the challenges you face.

Celebrating gratitude day

Get ready to celebrate the day of gratitude. Take advantage of the tips and guidelines that we have separated here so that you have a day full of gratitude actions and can share this feeling and the positive energies of this day with all the people around you.

How to celebrate the day of gratitude?

As the name implies, it is the day we practice gratitude, then, remember that the habit of complaining has the opposite effect of thanking. Therefore, the day of gratitude is an invitation for you to have positive thoughts and purify your feelings. Here are some tips on how to celebrate the day of gratitude with wisdom and exercising so that it becomes, increasingly, a habitdiary.

Meditation for Gratitude

Meditation is an efficient habit to calm the mind and contribute to a more balanced life. Use it to start your day with gratitude and make good energies to be channeled and can be felt and shared throughout the day.

Sit or kneel in a stable, comfortable position in a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. Begin by paying attention to your breathing for a few minutes and try to disconnect from the outside world by looking inside yourself.

Relax your eyes, if you prefer, close them and start to mentalize your material and emotional desires, your experiences, people and places. Remember that in the gratitude meditation the goal is not to stop thinking, but to activate your desires and generate manifestations of gratitude for all of them. Give thanks, even if the events have not been at all good.

Mentalize the teachings that they all brought. Stay, for a few minutes, revisiting the feeling of gratitude around these. Finish by turning your attention back to your breathing and normalizing your vibrations with the environment you are in, until you reconnect again with the present. Notice that, mentally, you will be renewed with good energies.

Be grateful for who you are

Liking yourself and being grateful for all that you are and all that you have achieved is one of the best ways to celebrate this day. Just as important as expressing gratitude to others is, in order of magnitude, the ability to do the same to ourselves.

Exercise gratitude to yourself. Think about your skills and qualities and value them. Recall important events in your life and how you managed to deal with them. If it was necessary to get around them, overcome some barrier, overcome some difficulty, or even to accept and forgive in order to move on to new phases.

It's not a matter of vanity to praise yourself, it's to realize that you, in your essence, should be grateful for something greater, which is existence, life and all that you manage, in your best efforts, to be.

Express gratitude to those you love

Leave the shame behind and verbalize, to those you love, all the gratitude for having them by your side. All of us have received, at some point, help, advice, assistance from people around us. These may be friends, family or people who have had occasional passages in our lives.

Do not miss the opportunity to be grateful to those who help you, who devotes a little of their time to contribute to your happiness. Use sincerity and express everything that is in your heart to, with words and attitudes, show gratitude to people who contribute to your well being.

Spend time with the one you love

As much as possible, organize yourself to spend the day of gratitude next to the one you love. Arrange a walk, set aside a few hours for a lunch or dinner and see that naturally good energies will be around you. Not always, in the rush of everyday life, we have time to be with the people we love. Use this day for that and remember to thank for this person, whom you love, and for herto be a part of your life.

Use optimistic statements

In everyday interactions, communication with co-workers, family and friends always use positive affirmations that bring good energy to the activity you are performing. Use the thank you to thank when someone does something for you. Thank people for expecting an activity or your presence on some occasion.

Ask how the day is of those around you and wish them a good week or weekend. Using positive affirmations will bring more joy to your day and the day of those around you. Behaving in a positive manner is also a gesture of thanks and gratitude.

Return the gratitude to society

One of the many ways to be grateful is to recognize and realize how things are, how, in fact, they are organized and happen. It is to open our eyes to the world around us, to how life is organized and to respect it.

Understanding how the society in which you live behaves and evolves is a force of gratitude to all the steps that the human being has been walking in evolution as a whole. Respect that new rules are born and old rules are extinguished is a valuable process, but we should be grateful for this movement, for this update.

Recognize that you live in a dynamic society and be grateful that it is made up of people who, like you, deserve happiness. Be grateful that we are different in sex, race, color, religion, values, but equal in essence, in ability and in gratitude.

Make a gratitude list

Now, try to leave the realm of thoughts only. Let's go to practice, put on paper actions and activities that can be performed to demonstrate all the gratitude you feel.

The day before or even on gratitude day, take paper and pencil and make a list of simple activities that you can set to express how grateful you are. It is worth a hug to that loved one, go out on the street and observe someone who needs help and effectively help; help with chores in your home that are not your responsibility, take your pet companion for a longer walk.

Finally, list activities that not only bring you a sense of gratitude, but also offer the other or the environment in which you live the feeling of gratitude. Think of simple activities, without great complexity, that bring emotional pleasure and leave you lighter.

See quality in yourself and others

Have you ever been surprised by that typical job interview question: what are your main qualities? If you have, you must remember that it took a few minutes to think and answer. And if you have never experienced it, one day you will. So, think and recognize what your qualities are and be grateful for them from now on.

Often we see only our defects and forget to recognize our qualities. It is even easier sometimes to recognize the qualities of other people than our own. Both attitudes, recognizing in the other and in yourself, will be pleasurable activities and bring positive benefits to your actions. Seeing qualities in yourself and in others is an exercise for gratitude.

To recognize that people are good at what they do, or how they do certain activities or deal with certain issues is to be closer to the other person. Also be closer to yourself, know yourself and be grateful for your qualities.

Be grateful for your hard times

Not all moments in our lives are easy. We all go through situations we wish didn't happen. We lose loved ones, perform tasks we don't agree with in whole or in part, act recklessly, among other moments we'd like to rewrite.

But, also thanks to these difficult moments that we manage to be stronger, learn from different situations and renew our energies. We will not be grateful for the difficulties, but, yes, for everything that the difficulty helped to transform in your life. Be grateful to learn from the situations, transform the difficult energies in teachings and in revolutions of gratitude.

Be grateful for your past

We are all made up of experiences, some good, some not so good, but we can't deny that the past happened and that somehow it contributed to make you the person you are today. Past experiences serve to create a knowledge of the world. It is only because of this knowledge that today you are able to make new choices and choose to follow new paths.

The memory and memories of the past are a gift that should be channeled with positivity. As difficult as it may have been, your past has made you who you are today. Be grateful to have been through experiences that have made you the person you are.

Curiosities related to the gratitude day

The day of gratitude draws attention by some curiosities and initiatives that have been carried out in order to demonstrate actions of gratitude. Here are some of them: The use of the word gratitude in social networks has become a fever in recent years. Mentions of the word total more than 1.1 million uses, according to search engines.

At the time of year-end festivities (Christmas and New Year's Eve), there is a greater incidence of the use of terms such as I am grateful and gratitude. In Brazil, the most used word, even today, to say thank you is the word "Obrigado". In other countries, this word is not used with this meaning.

To say the word "thank you", in fact, is to say "I thank you", that is, I owe you for the favor. The word gratitude, is present in Latin as "gratia", which means "grace", literally, or "gratus", which means pleasant.

Benefits of gratitude

Being grateful and exercising gratitude brings several benefits. See some benefits that we have listed here to encourage you to be increasingly grateful:

1- Increased sense of well-being: remembering and exercising gratitude every day brings a comfort and calms the heart. The habit of being grateful can be performed constantly with simple activities and that, if repeated, will already be understood as habits of well-being.

2- Longer lasting relationships: people who are constantly grateful for the company of other people, praise the qualities of others, help others and other attitudes of gratitude, build stronger relationships that last for many years.

3- Professional development: being grateful and recognizing your evolution directly influences your professional development, since you recognize your effort and analyze your experiences, becoming grateful for the path you are walking and can project your future achievements.

4- Minimizes attachment to material goods: although the desire to build and acquire material goods is not a problem, it should be noted that gratitude makes people give more value to the things they own and, as a consequence, take better care of these assets, thus reducing attachment or purchases of new items.

How to be more optimistic?

Being optimistic is to keep the thoughts in positive energies and strongly believe that the best will always happen, within a possible reality. When we exercise gratitude, we are exalting the concepts that make us more and more optimistic. Some other attitudes contribute to be increasingly optimistic, keep reading and get to know them:

1-Experiment not to complain so much, gratitude takes away the power of complaint and makes more room for optimism.

2- Create small optimistic goals for the day to day. Planning and focusing your goal in positive activities moves the feeling of well-being and, if they are correctly performed, the feeling of satisfaction that is directly linked to gratitude.

3- Try to dedicate some time, in front of the issues you deal with, to think about the positive aspects. Mentalize what can go right and, why not, also what can go wrong, since, in this slice, you already understand the gains and teachings that you will absorb

Why is gratitude powerful?

When we are grateful, we are able to recognize what is good. We sharpen our ability to identify good things and also to relate to people who truly act like this. Therefore, gratitude has the power to change people and change the world.

Gratitude becomes a powerful chain of good, able to deliver to as many people as possible, the power of transformation, both in perspective and attitudes and lead, as a consequence, to good and uplifting actions.