Practicing gratitude throughout your day doesn’t need to take up a lot of time or effort. It can actually be really easy. Especially if you think about infusing your day with gratitude the same way you make tea.
During a webinar with Intuition, Kristianna George, an Atlanta-based health and wellness coach, summed it up like this: If you were to take a sip of plain warm water, it’s nothing special. Just like there’s nothing special about spending your day on auto-pilot. But if you put a tea bag in the water—aka some gratitude—and let it steep for a few minutes, you’ll have a totally different experience when you drink it.
“You don’t want to go through your day drinking boiled water—you want to be drinking your favorite tea,” George says. “The tea bag is being infused into the water. It’s permeating the water, and it alters it—usually for the better. But remember the steeping process doesn’t happen overnight. Usually, the teas that are the most rich and flavorful are the ones that have a more intricate steeping process.”
George says you can almost envision gratitude as one of the spices in the teas you’re steeping. “Hopefully you’re filling your tea with so many spices and so much goodness that you’re getting the richness of the life you have,” she says. Here’s how to begin infusing gratitude into your own daily routine.
How to Infuse Gratitude Into Your Daily Routine
Begin by identifying one consistent action for each area of the day that you can meet with gratitude. Then, George says to pick a specific action that you consistently do in the morning, during the workday, and during the evening. Lastly, for each of those, jot down your answers to the following:
- Why is this pleasing?
- What comfort is supplied, or discomfort alleviated?
- What benefits are received?
As an example, one of George’s daily actions is meditating in the morning. To answer those three questions, it 1) gives her time to simply be; 2) gives her a spacious mind; and 3) allows her to be grounded and centered for the day.
Since these are things you’re already doing every day, why not meet them with gratitude? “It shifts the way you approach and live out that action,” George says. Before you know it, you’ll be infusing gratitude into many parts of your daily routine—not just three!—for an incredibly rich and flavorful life.
