***Enlarge Your Moments and Your Heart with Gratitude: 3 Timely Tips

“If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.”
Gerald Good

Gratitude is always a choice that enriches your time and your life - always. And it’s anything but sentimental or irrelevant.

Gratitude is grounded solidly in the realities of life – and sometimes those are hard realities. Coming from a place of gratitude, you take the full measure of your gifts, knowing that anything you now possess can be taken away. Anything, that is, except your commitment to do your best.
With a grateful heart, you make the best of what is.
Here are 3 timely tips that are firmly grounded in the power of gratitude:

1. Take an inventory of your strengths, using gratitude. Resentment and a victim-stance will always sap your incentive. That’s because they’d have you focus on what you don't have.

But gratitude opens your heart. When you are grateful and focused on the positives around you, you respond to challenges with a much fuller awareness of the resources you can draw upon. This isn’t pie in the sky – this is being able to respond with agility and creativity, and make the most of what you have.

So try this: The next time you feel overwhelmed, take a few moments to list what you are grateful for. Take special notice of any of the ways your choices have contributed to using your time effectively.

You are replacing a scarcity mentality with an abundance reality. Your decisions around time will always be stronger when you anchor yourself with gratitude and a thorough assessment of your assets.

2. Create a gratitude scenario to work towards. This is a powerful way to move toward your goals. Whatever your current situation may be, envision a successful outcome to it – one that is entirely within your control. Maybe it’s a triumph over difficult odds – something you win through your own patience and persistence. Or maybe it’s a triumph of spirit that is derived from your dedication to grow and learn. Either way, it is your triumph.

Notice how your realistically-envisioned gratitude scenario can overcome those fear-based "what if?" fantasies that can so kindle anxiety and sleeplessness.

Remind yourself that your capacity to make your best time choices springs from your very real strengths in the here-and-now, rather than from fears about some unknown future.

3. Choose your allies with gratitude. If you want to make a major turnaround in your life, envision yourself joining the ranks of the people whose inspirational stories energize you. You can be as successful and inspiring as they are. How would you like to pass along the good news about how enormous the moment can be, when your heart is full and when you are doing your best? You can grow and expand your heart exponentially … giving thanks for what you have been given, and for what you can give to yourself and to others.

Try this: Consider the words of encouragement you would offer someone who looks to you for guidance. Give yourself this message, and write it down. Review it at the end of the day. And give thanks to yourself that you care enough about yourself to make the best of this moment, and all moments to come.

Now, ask yourself: How can you start strengthening your sense of gratitude today to enhance your effectiveness and start finding more time?

To take your next step toward your Heart-Based Time Success, sign up for our free gift, the Finding Time Success Kit which includes "The New Finding Time Boundary Template: 9 Simple, Sequential Steps to Find More Time and Recharge Your Energy!" Using a workbook format, this powerful and practical time template will help you move beyond overwhelm, disappointment, and frustration and discover that 24 hours really are enough!

Offered by Paula Eder, Ph.D. The Time Finder Expert.