gratitude essay

The Benefits Of Gratitude

“Talk about life as a miserable existence, that was me before I started to change.”

For years, most of my adult life for sure, misery was my constant companion. That’s a poetic way to say my life sucked. Or at least I thought it sucked. And since I thought my life sucked, well, it did.

I use to be so focused on everything that was wrong in my life. I was fat. I was lonely. I was broke. I was depressed. And all I could think about was how miserable I was. Every morning, the first thought that came into my head was “Ugh.” Usually followed by a few choice cuss words. I would sleep in as long as I could because I was dreading my day. It was going to be full of stuff I didn’t want to do, more loneliness, more disappointment. Life had become a chore with no joy in it.

Looking back now, it’s no mystery as to why I was so miserable. All I wanted to see was the negative. All the people I hung out with could only see the negative. I was surrounded by hopelessness, inside and out, so how are you suppose to want to get out of bed when that’s all you have to look forward to?!

The crazy part is, my life was amazing. I had so much love, respect and opportunity in my life. I just couldn’t see it through all the “depression fog.” I saw what I wanted to see and I became who I wanted to become.

Fat. Lonely. Broke. Depressed.

It got bad. Really bad. I even became suicidal for a while. I knew I had two options - give up or figure out how to be happy.

Thankfully I chose the second.

I began a quest of discovery. How do happy people do it? What is the difference between their life and mine? And how can I find happiness?

There were many answers that I discovered and I am going to be sharing them with you over the course of this year. But one of the biggest and most obvious was GRATITUDE.

I found out that a lot of happy people are happy because they CHOOSE to be. It doesn’t just happen. They choose to focus on the awesome things in their life. Even when times are hard, they choose to see the good. And when you choose to see the good stuff, then you start to feel good. And good things seem to “start” happening to you. The truth is there has always been good things happening to you, you just couldn’t see them.

This is the year of change. Every month this year I am going to release a new song that deals with a different aspect of overcoming negativity and finding true happiness. It’s all part of the 12 Core Principles I have found to be the cure for depression and the path to a happy life!

The first principle is Abundance and it was my single that came out on January 1st. If you want to read more about this core value, you can do so by checking out my blog post “Why Am I Always Broke?

The second principle is Gratitude and the single comes out February 1st.

So get ready for big changes this year. These 12 Core Principles will change your life, just like they have changed mine if you choose to embrace them and practice them every day. Everything we want is right in front of us, we just have to choose to see it!