Expressing gratitude is a powerful way to improve one's overall well-being and happiness. One effective method for cultivating gratitude is through the use of affirmations, which are positive statements that can be repeated to oneself in order to reprogram the mind and change negative thought patterns.

Have you ever felt lost? That feeling where you are simply floating about your day, detached from reality and all that surrounds you, in a cycle of depression, unable to break out of your mind, as if you are frozen in time. That feeling where your heart seems numb, when nothing ever satisfies you anymore, where you are searching for a will to carry on, for a higher purpose and cannot find it anywhere.

A Google search of the word gratitude yields nearly two billion results. Yes, two billion. There are 48 million Instagram posts alone tagged with #thankful. More and more companies from just about every industry are using some form of the word grateful not just in their branding but also in their business names.

We all have moments we want to wish away.  Stuck in the middle is, well, sticky. But these are growth opportunities that (hopefully!) connect our souls upward and outward.

Gratitude is a spiritual discipline that allows us to focus on what we have instead of what we think we need.