If you win the lottery, you will obviously be extremely happy, but how long does that last? It's impossible for external factors to make you permanently happy. People who win the lottery end up just as happy as the average person after 1 year. And anything you think you need to be happy, is just the same, once you get that thing you will only be happy for a while and then you'll be on to the next thing and again you'll say you'll be happy once you get that thing.I am going to share with you some information so incredibly powerful, this could be the most important thing you'll ever read, but it's so simple, you won't believe it and you won't bother because you don't think it will work. The key to true happiness is...Gratitude.Through being grateful on a regular basis, you are rewiring your brain and realising that you already have hundreds of things to be happy for, so that thing you desperately want that you think will make you happy becomes less important. You become content. Gratitude leads to contentment and when you are content, you are happy with the present moment.Ok so how the hell do I "get gratitude"? It's simple, but will require some effort from you, especially with making a habit out of this to make it work properly as the benefits will grow as the brain rewires. Start a list, for me I use a plain text file. You're going to list anything you can think of you're grateful for, the very fact you're reading this means you can include these things: your eyes, electricity, the device you're reading this on and the fact you're even alive. Then just come back to this gratitude list as often as you like, ideally once a week and read through it and build the list up, think of something new every time you read it. Don't just rush reading through it though, focus for 1 second on each thing, like visualise it in your minds eye.You have so much to be grateful for. Instead of always looking into the future for that 1 thing you want, spend some time looking into the past and present at all the things you already have. I know this works because when I found out about how a study found that a simple gratitude exercise causes people to report feeling better up to 1 month later, I decided to actually do it on a weekly basis and sometimes I'm just randomly in such a good mood I have asked myself "why the hell am I in such a good mood?"So if I continue this for the rest of my life I will be experience more happiness than someone who won the lottery. And the great thing is, you can do this too. It costs nothing but a small amount of time and is probably the most efficient thing you could ever do with your time. 5 minutes a week, could make you happier than someone who won the lottery.Don't believe me? Here's a little something for those who want some science, gives an example of one of many studies that prove gratitude has long term benefits for you: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain
I think that in a way, practising gratitude is kind of like a cheat code that you can use to get happiness again from the same things that made you happy in the past