I’m extremely pumped about this gratitude challenge.

Why? Mainly because I’ve learned that when you change your mental state into one of gratitude, you free yourself to be happy, do more, and make progress.

It’s this mental switch that turns off fear, disappointment, or sadness. And it turns on positivity, happiness, and a healthy spirit.

The beauty of it is you can choose to be grateful at anytime.

For example, if you get fired from your job, you’re probably first going to be down in the dumps.

However, you can stay there and mope around for the next month.

Or you can change your mental state to gratitude and feel thankful that you have a place to go home to. You can feel thankful about the lessons you learned from this job. You can have gratitude that you have a significant other who supports you and encourages you to get a new job.

And feeling grateful for big or small things in the midst of trial, is what keeps you going forward.

So back to our example. If you’re focused on losing the job and throwing yourself a pity party, you’re not going to get closer to finding a new one. But if you’re grateful for something, you’re more likely to get back on that horse and put in the effort to find your dream job.

And I’m by nowhere near perfect at this, ask the people around me, but I’m getting better at it. And it’s made a world of difference in my professional and personal life.

Just last week, I was down about the early sales of my online course. But I remembered to be grateful for the simple fact that I put together a killer course. Plus, I remembered the other successes in my life, like this blog and my bestselling books.

This gratefulness inspired me to keep going and try new marketing strategies for the course.

As you see, gratitude is the answer. It never fails.

Let’s get into more of the specific benefits of being grateful.

Benefits of Being Grateful

Gratitude gets less attention than other feelings (like fear, sadness, or anger), which is a shame.

So I’m trying to make gratitude famous. And I want your help in this mission, because gratitude helps you:

• Have a high quality of life. Focusing on the good makes you feel good, and results in you stop focusing on the bad that puts you in an awful mood. Choosing to be grateful relaxes you away from stress, makes your life more peaceful, and produces more rest.
• Improve life around you. Gratitude is contagious. You telling someone you’re thankful for them, puts a smile on their face the rest of the day. They often feel good so they pay gratitude forward to someone else. Then this person does the same. And your initial act of gratitude becomes the catalyst that indirectly encourages complete strangers.
• Overcome adversity. As I mentioned in the example above, a feeling of gratitude gives you the energy to move forward. Your self-esteem improves when you recognize the good in your life. So you become more optimistic about the future, even if your present reality isn’t so bright. This optimism leads to more action and positive results.
• Advance in your career. Being grateful makes a difference in the workplace, too. For example, you’ll build better connections, reach for higher goals, be more efficient, and get more out of work when you’re thankful for the opportunity to work.
• Build a stronger social life. When you express gratitude, other people enjoy being around you more. That’s not rocket science. This will improve your friendships, build a stronger relationship or marriage, and opens you up to meeting more new people. Gratitude and happiness go together, and people love happy people.
• Be healthier. The mind and the body are connected. Someone down on life most likely isn’t going to eat healthy, go to the gym, and live with energy because they don’t enjoy life. Living with gratitude gives you energy to make good decisions about health and nutrition. Plus, you get better sleep since you know everything is going to be ok.

How To Have & Show Gratitude

If you live in the US, you already have it better than billions of people. That’s the first reason to be grateful right off the bat.

Don’t believe me? Do this 10 second experiment. Type in your income or net worth in the Global Rich List calculator. This will change your entire perspective about your prosperity.

Now that you understand how blessed you are, it’s time to show it.

Expressing gratitude to people, and yourself, is much simpler than you think.

First, let’s cover showing gratitude to other people.

All it requires is a small, tiny effort to communicate to someone (or yourself) that you’re grateful for them. This can look like:

• A pleasant phone call to your mom
• A friendly email to an old friend
• An old-school handwritten card
• A big smile or wink to a friend or stranger
• Stay after work to help a coworker
• Give money to a local charity organization
• Shower someone with praise on what they excel at
• Plan a Saturday doing something that someone in your life has always wanted to
• Tip 25% higher than you normally do at a restaurant
• Surprise your significant other with flowers

Next, is what I call internal gratitude to love yourself. It’s when you stop and take a break to reflect on how good you have it, regardless of present circumstance. This can look like this:

• Journal three things you’re grateful for and why
• Give yourself an entire day to rest and relax
• Splurge on an item you’ve wanted for a long time
• Go on a walk and listen to your favorite music
• Reflect on how far you’ve come since just five years ago
• Take a month off to travel overseas
• Think about all the people in your life and why you enjoy their presence
• Compliment yourself after succeeding
• Compliment yourself after failing, for having the guts to try it
• Wake up each morning thankful for another day to live

Lastly, whether it’s external or internal, gratitude comes down to a choice. You can choose to be grateful.

When you harness this powerful, it’s truly amazing, especially when you’re feeling down and out.

The magic in gratitude is that you get to decide your mood, and you become happier by practicing gratitude.

And when you commit to being a grateful person through tried and true practice, eventually it becomes natural to get into the grateful mindset.

You become a person of gratitude that blesses others (and yourself) with the way you live.

To make progress toward that, please join me on this 7 day Gratitude Challenge.

7 Day Gratitude Challenge Rules

To avoid any feelings of procrastination or laziness, I like to set up official rules in these challenges.

Below are the official rules for The 7 Day Gratitude Challenge.

1. Start each day (all week) with a text telling someone special in your life that you’re grateful for them, and specifically explain why. You’ll blow them away and they will feel like the luckiest person on the planet. If you want to go above expectations, tell them in person or on the phone.

2. Block off 30 minutes each day (all week) to do something you want to do for yourself. Being grateful for life is as easy as spending time to enjoy it in the beautiful world we live in.

3. Before you go to bed each night (all week), think of three things you’re grateful for that happened that day—or that you have. Aim to think of three different things you’re grateful for each night, meaning don’t repeat anything. You can write this down in a journal, say it out loud, or think it in your head.

Get Excited!

I’m so confident that taking this Gratitude Challenge will be a healthy and special week for you. That’s why I’m extremely excited for you.

When you take this challenge, you’re going to invest in the relationships of your loyal friends and family.

You’re going to get an allotted time to do something you enjoy without feeling guilty about it.

And you’re going to go to bed feeling thankful for all that you have.

What’s funny is this can almost pass as the Thinking Positive Challenge. Because you’re going to feel high and energized about life.

That’s going to snowball a bunch of other powerful thoughts and life-changing actions.

Lastly, I need to get something off my chest: I’m grateful for you!