20 Things You Can Be Grateful for Right Now

Maybe you’ve heard about the benefits of gratitude. It’s all the rage right now - and for a good reason.

Gratefulness actually changes the way your brain works. With gratitude as a regular practice, your brain starts processing information differently. Individuals who regularly practiced gratitude see huge personal growth and development as they begin to think more positively. They manage negative emotions and events better and receive new motivation to further improve your life.

It can be hard to get started but you’re struggling to see the positive, so perhaps you need a bit more inspiration for the day.

If you’ve been down in the dumps or you just need someone to point these good aspects of your life out for you. We’ve got your back!

Here are 20 things you can be grateful for right now:

1. Your Health & Your Life

This life is a gift you should cherish. Not everyone gets the opportunity to live a full life. It gets taken from some too soon and their ambitions and hopes or dreams are cut short. Yours isn’t.

You can still dream. You can still act. You can still make your life what you want it to be.

Although life’s purpose might be hard to fully grasp or nail down, think of life as an experience that you are lucky to have. Others aren’t as lucky. Poverty and disease are all too real and prominent in many parts of the world.

Try to experience and take in as much as you can. Fill up your life with experiences, love, and kindness. And really appreciate it. Take a moment right now to take it all in and let those emotions fill up your heart. Carry that with you throughout the rest of your day.

2. Drinking Water

790 million people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water. You do.

And it’s a necessity. The body is 60% water. Be grateful that you can simply turn on your tap and fill up a glass. Not everyone is as lucky.

3. Your Home

Whether you own it, are renting, or are crashing with a friend, you have a roof over your head and a place to sleep. It’s “home.”

150 million people are homeless. It’s another thing you have that you likely take for granted day by day.

4. Your Own Strength

What have you got through that was difficult? Maybe it was helping a friend through rough times. Maybe it was the courage to tell someone how you truly felt. Perhaps it was your ability to offer kindness and warmth - despite your own feelings of sadness.

Your strength is something to be grateful for. You’ve shown determination and perseverance to make it this far. Keep pushing!

5. Your Senses

Take a moment and appreciate your ability to sense these things around you. In any way that you can, our senses make living more beautiful and vibrant.

Without them, you wouldn’t be able to see the glorious colours come alive in that painting. You wouldn’t be able to hear the beautiful and intricate sounds that come together to form a song.

6. Your Failures

You live and you learn and failure is the best teacher. Be thankful you messed up, take that and throw it into personal development and learning. Become better for it and be grateful for the wisdom each failure or bump in the road grants you.

Related Article: How to Use Your Failures to Strengthen Your Soul

7. Your Job

That job gives you the freedom to live: It pays for your food, the roof above your head, and more. Even if you don’t like it, try to find these little bits of positive energy attached to it. Be grateful for the journey that got you there and the prospect of growth and the empowerment to change the world around you.

8. Your Enemies

Those bullies in school, That co-worker at work that you just can’t stand. Use these people as measures of what you don’t want to be and appreciate that they’ve shown you how not to act. You’re that much better because of it!

9. The Sun or that Cloud in the Sky

Be grateful for all this world has, without the sun or that cloud shaped like a dragon, we wouldn’t have life or food to support that life or water.

10. Your Decisions

You’ve made some good ones and some bad ones. Chances are, they’ve driven your personal growth and development that much farther. Also, be grateful that you could make these decisions, there are people out there who aren’t able to choose for themselves. Appreciate your freedom and ability to choose.

11. Electricity!

Without it, we wouldn’t have plenty of light as the sun goes down. We’d freeze during the colder months, AC wouldn’t exist during those heat waves, and you wouldn’t even be reading this article online right now. Thank you, electricity!

12. Trees & Grass

The greenery screams beauty. It also balances out the toxins in this world - giving us clear and clean oxygen to breathe. Give gratitude to nature whenever you can, even if it’s just concentrating on the beautiful world around you while drinking your morning coffee.

13. Your Friends

Your friends you laugh with during good times and cry with during hard times; all in all, they make life easier and more fun. Social connection is important for good mental health. Appreciate those that want to spend time with you and love you for you!

14. Little Moments

Maybe it was the 5 seconds of intimacy you shared with your S.O. Or perhaps it was when your mother expressed how proud she was of you. Take in those little moments and be thankful for them. Acknowledge the little things and refer to them when the big things come to take your gratitude away.

15. Teachers or Mentors in Your Life

From school teachers to the mentors that have taught you something, be grateful that they took the time to help you understand. Your world would be so much more narrow without them!

16. Anything You Own

The clothing on your bag, your couch, your boots or shoes - anything and everything you’ve got - be thankful you have it. (And if you don’t, consider the Marie Kondo method of giving it away to someone who would use it and appreciate it!)

17. Food

Do you have food in the pantry? Do you have lunch for today? Are you able to give yourself proper nutrition? Be grateful for that - no matter what kind of food it is.

18. The Internet & Cell Phones

You’re able to stay connected with more people than ever before. Old friends that live in the town over? New friends that connect with you in a way never possible before? You can stay in touch with them so easily. Be grateful we live in such a time, there’s been no other era like it.

19. Your Successes

What are you proud of? What have you accomplished? Be thankful for these successes and how they’ve boosted your confidence and allowed you to grow even farther. They’ve opened doors of opportunity. What isn’t there to love?

20. Plumbing

Like electricity and the internet, how lucky are we to live in a time where plumbing is the norm?

What Else Are You Grateful For?

Find the unique things in your life or be more specific. How many things can you come up with? Spend 10 minutes writing them down and taking them in.

And make gratitude practice a foundational piece in your life. It makes more difference than you think when it comes to improving your life and your happiness. Use it as motivation daily and motivation to continually make your life what you want it to be.

Keep the gratitude going, read Your Brain on Gratitude!