At the be­gin­ning of every new week, month or year, many peo­ple make a prac­tice of tak­ing time to re-eval­u­ate their lives, by mak­ing lists of goals and things-to-do while crit­i­cal­ly as­sess­ing where they are as op­posed to where they would like to be.

Some­times, this process can lead to more harm than good, when plan­ning can be­come ex­ten­sive and over­whelm­ing, lead­ing to fur­ther anx­i­ety and frus­tra­tion. This is a com­mon phe­nom­e­non for teenagers and young peo­ple. While there are many tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to re­flec­tion and plan­ning, it is im­por­tant that we all main­tain a sense of grat­i­tude for the many bless­ings, op­por­tu­ni­ties and pos­i­tive as­pects of our lives. Plan with a pur­pose while re­main­ing grate­ful for your gifts. Grat­i­tude is one of many pos­i­tive emo­tions that leads to well­ness, by plac­ing fo­cus on the good and be­ing con­scious­ly thank­ful for these things.

It is easy to go through dai­ly life tak­ing for grant­ed many things that tru­ly are gifts. The health and abil­i­ty to awak­en each day. A place to live. Food, clean wa­ter, fam­i­ly, friends and even high-speed wifi ac­cess. These and all the trap­pings of mod­ern liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go have be­come the ex­pect­ed, but we should ac­knowl­edge that these are in­deed bless­ings for which we should be grate­ful.

The prac­tice of grat­i­tude ac­tu­al­ly goes a step fur­ther be­yond sim­ply say­ing “thank you” and em­bod­ies the con­scious act of tak­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to pause, re­flect and tru­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the world around us. Show­ing grat­i­tude does not just feel good. It has been demon­strat­ed that mak­ing a habit of grat­i­tude re­peats many ben­e­fits to our bod­ies, emo­tion­al health and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

•Grat­i­tude opens us up to more pos­si­bil­i­ties by boost­ing our abil­i­ty to see op­por­tu­ni­ties, learn and make god de­ci­sions.

•Pos­i­tiv­i­ty over­pow­ers neg­a­tive emo­tions. Young peo­ple who ap­pre­ci­ate what they have are hap­pi­er, more em­pow­ered and ex­pe­ri­ence few­er men­tal health con­cerns in­clud­ing anx­i­ety and de­pres­sion. Rather than fo­cussing on what is miss­ing, grat­i­tude fa­cil­i­tates a sense of calm and ex­pec­tant pos­si­bil­i­ties for the fu­ture.

•Grat­i­tude and oth­er pos­i­tive emo­tions build on each oth­er. When young peo­ple are grate­ful, they quick­ly ex­pe­ri­ence hap­pi­ness, calm, joy and hope. These lead to pos­i­tive ac­tions, pay­ing for­ward pos­i­tiv­i­ty and in­creased at­ten­tion to de­vel­op­ment of a pos­i­tive fam­i­ly, school and com­mu­ni­ty. When we feel grate­ful for an act of kind­ness to­ward us, we may be more like­ly to do kind­ness in re­turn. In ef­fect, there is a pos­i­tive ef­fect on some­one else’s ac­tions.

•Be­ing thank­ful helps to build bet­ter re­la­tion­ships. When par­ents open­ly ex­press thanks to their teens for their con­tri­bu­tions to the home, school or gen­er­al fam­i­ly life, they feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed. This works to­ward build­ing bet­ter re­la­tion­ship by cre­at­ing bonds and strength­en­ing ties.

The most ef­fec­tive way for teenagers and adults to ex­press grat­i­tude as a lifestyle is to build a habit of count­ing bless­ings. On a dai­ly ba­sis, pay at­ten­tion to things you recog­nise in your life that you are hap­py to ex­pe­ri­ence. Take mo­ments every day to ac­knowl­edge and no­tice the beau­ty of the is­land around you. We are for­tu­nate to live in a coun­try as di­verse and cul­tur­al­ly rich as ours, yet we all too of­ten for­get, or al­low un­for­tu­nate events to over­shad­ow our op­por­tu­ni­ties. In ad­di­tion to this prac­tice, we should make a pos­i­tive habit of phys­i­cal­ly thank­ing the peo­ple in our lives when they dis­play acts of kind­ness. A phone call, writ­ten note or thank you card all are mean­ing­ful and tan­gi­ble ex­pres­sions of thanks. Grate­ful young peo­ple and adults feel a sense of abun­dance in their lives, ap­pre­ci­ate the con­tri­bu­tions of oth­ers and rec­og­nize the small plea­sures of life. Teach­ing teenagers the ac­tive prac­tice of grat­i­tude has many re­wards to­ward their emo­tion­al health and well­ness.