Want to improve your mental, physical and emotional health for free? Noticing the beauty in daily life and being grateful for it is a great, free way to experience several health benefits and an overall better quality of life.
For anyone who follows Piggy and I on Instagram (@piggypays), you may have noticed that I post a lot of pictures of nature and other random finds with hashtags like “freetoenjoy”, “findbeauty” and “itsthelittlethings.” Although these photos may not be the jaw-dropping, money-saving insights that I hope to provide on other occasions, they are a chance for me to share with you the things in my day-to-day life that make me smile and fill me with gratitude. Plus, from experience, education and research, I’ve learned that taking the time to notice and appreciate the blessings in life, big or small, and being grateful for them, can positively shape your perspective, change the way you view challenges, make bad days better, and increase your overall well-being.
According to a 2014 Forbes article on the benefits of gratitude, grateful people experience several scientifically proven benefits, including: improved physical and psychological health, enhanced empathy, better sleep, improved self-esteem and an increase in mental health. With a little practice in choosing to forego the strong desire to gripe (trust me, as one of four kids, I understand the deep-seeded desire and ease of griping) and choosing instead to look for the many reasons to be grateful, you can gain all these benefits without paying a dime. Sounds like a great deal to me. Practicing gratitude trains your eyes, ears, mind and heart to notice the good more than the bad, which can only result in a happier frame of mind.
So friends, I am excited to continue sharing all my little discoveries with you and hope to see some of yours too with the hashtags “freetoenjoy” and “findbeauty.”
