Question – What does your mind do when you practice gratitude?

Answer – It scans your day.

Why is this important?

First, let me explain a little about questions. When you ask yourself a question the question sends your mind in search of an answer. When you ask yourself, “What am I grateful for today?” That question sends your mind scanning through your day looking for those things for which you are grateful. The question has the benefit of focusing your mind on something specific – for what you are grateful – the good parts of your day, your brain tends to only look at those aspects of your day.

Due to a variety of reasons, we tend to focus more on the negative than we do on the positive. Our brains naturally scan for all the bad things in our lives, we don’t even have to ask ourselves a question for this to happen. The act of scanning your day looking for what you are grateful allows you to reacquaint yourself with all of the good things that have happened during the day/week/month. Scanning helps you look through your day, the question that sets your mind scanning allows you to focus your mind on the good parts of your day/life/relationships/past. Habitual scanning for the good has the benefit of rewiring your brain to offset the natural tendency to focus on the negative. What you do with the results of the scan is your choice.

Starting today what can you do differently? In order to get the biggest bang for your buck when practicing gratitude scan your day for the smallest, most obscure and specific events for which to be grateful. Those events for which you find yourself saying, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Those are the events you want to make a habit of scanning for. Make a habit of priming your children for the good by asking them about the good things of their day. This way you will teach them how to scan their days, during the day they will be more attuned to the good that happened.