By being mindful you bring awareness and caring into everything you do and approach life more optimistically. When you’re living mindfully you will also be living with gratitude.

It’s easy for our minds to become occupied with life’s daily stresses. When you take the time to slow down and clear your mind, you often come up with straightforward solutions to problems and sometimes a new perspective. Reflecting on the good things in your life and not focusing on things that might not be going so well is what we should strive to do. Recognizing what we have to be grateful for and showing gratitude for the life we have can create a sense of peace within.

Rather than being led solely by reactive emotion or influenced by negative past experiences or stress, practicing gratitude will help harness the ability to control your mind's thoughts. This will allow you to deal with challenging moments or situations in a clear-minded, calm and centered way as well as shift your way of thinking.

How to achieve it?
Every day, take time to clear your mind and focus on what you are grateful for. Work your way through the following forms of meditation:

Mindful breathing
Mindful observation
Mindful awareness
Mindful listening

A great way to incorporate this into your daily routine is to meditate first thing when you wake up in the morning. Spend 10-30 minutes clearing your mind, reflecting on what you are grateful for and set positive intentions.

Your mind may follow the course that is easy and most familiar to you; dragging you back to those negative, stressful thoughts, feelings and habits. Your mind may require some 're-programming' which you can do by setting gratitude goals for yourself. For instance, choose to focus on 3-5 things that you are grateful for.

By making this gratitude exercise a regular practice, your mind will get used to this new state of being present and over time, having strengthened your mindfulness muscle, you will choose this way of thinking as a way of being.