5 Life-changing Benefits for Ageing Gratefully
There are an unlimited number of benefits to those who gain a truly grateful heart, regardless of age. I am briefly listing five that have been conclusively proven. By bringing these to the spotlight I hope to encourage you to consider how you view ageing and perhaps adapt to a new way of thinking.
1 | Acceptance
By being grateful for the experiences that have brought us to where we are in life, an amount of acceptance seems to run parallel. I found that once I had accepted the tragedy that life had dealt me, I was able to move forward with more optimism and appreciation of life’s joys. Accepting ageing for the privilege it truly is, is truly empowering. It liberates us to focus on all the joys and benefits of being alive and because we then become more happy and positive, others enjoy sharing our company. It also enables us to encourage others to embrace their age and so a transformative cycle begins.
2 | Reduces Stress
Ageing is an inevitable lifelong process that happens to us all. Fighting it causes stress and anxiety because it is an aspect of living that we simply cannot avoid. Being grateful for the experiences of the years that have brought us to where we are reduces the stress we often attach to getting older and allows us to move forward with vitality and appreciation of our gained wisdom - wisdom that only comes with time and experience.
3 | Attitude
Studies are showing that being grateful improves mental and physical wellbeing and that our mindset plays an important role in this. To put it simply, we can decide to be grateful and joyous or we can decide to be miserable and complaining. Kahlil Gibran puts it beautifully when he said: Your life is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life, not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens to you.
Since I have decided to fully embrace this concept of gratefulness and adopt it into my daily life, it has given me a defense for when irritations occur. I now recognise that I have a choice in my response to them. That, in itself, is empowering, even if I don’t always make the right choice! Like anything worth having, this requires dedication and persistence. Gratitude is a heartfelt emotion and cannot be willed into existence by a one- time decision. The choice to be grateful, to respond and not react, is one that must be made many times a day as we encounter so many situations and circumstances. As we make this choice, more and more as time goes by our hearts are transformed by our ever-growing gratefulness. This is how gratefulness becomes so transformative.
4 | Increased Wellbeing
As I mentioned above, there are clinical studies showing the benefits to our mental and physical health if we live life from a place of gratitude. The longer we live the more we have experienced and all experiences, whether we label them positive or negative, can be lessons if we allow them to be. Looking at these experiences with gratitude will allow us to see the wisdom they have to offer because our minds are open and receptive. It also allows us to let go and be more aware of the blessings around us in the moment. This is profoundly beneficial for our health and wellbeing. In Proverbs 17:22, Solomon said: A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Studies have shown that happy people become sick less often and that if they do get sick, the duration of their illness is shorter than that of unhappy people. Gratitude has also been shown to reset brain neurons so that our focus becomes more set on noticing the positive around us; essentially, we become a ‘glass half full’ type of person!
5 | Choices
I believe this is one of the most exciting reasons to be grateful for living longer. Maturity can give us the bigger picture as we become more reflective and protective of our time. There are so many opportunities for us in the Western World. We can pretty much choose how we would like to spend our latter years if we enjoy good health. We can choose our attitude toward how we age. Some people can seem old at 30 while others can seem young at 80. It is a choice. It is up to each and every one of us to give ourselves permission to embrace the choices and be comfortable, vibrant and joyous in our later years.
Acceptance and gratitude towards ageing will allow us to adapt and grow, living more fully and joyously while opening us up to see the opportunities and benefits around us.
This is the reason I created Ageing Gratefully - to offer solutions to the roadblocks that often hinder us from fully embracing the age we are and therefore preventing us from seeing the opportunities and blessings around us. Too often we may ask, “how can I be grateful when I have suffered such heartbreak?” I have proved it is possible and am here to share the techniques I have found worked for me. We are in this together!
This is the journey and the power of ageing gratefully.