5-Minute Guided Gratitude Meditation for Happiness 😊 | by Delson Armstrong

Is there any practice you would want to share with us that's only at most five minutes? That's easy, a better size for people to take home when they need a happiness boost. Yeah, I think one of the best ways of experiencing happiness internally, and also experiencing a lot of joy and contentment, is to do a gratitude practice. So maybe we can spend some time doing that. Do we want to do this with eyes open or closed? How do we want to do it? Because you said people might be driving while listening to this, so obviously we don't want them to do it. Oh, let's do eyes open, because that's actually something I want to convey too. Even for meditation, you can do active meditation as well, sometimes, right? Yeah. Oh, pelosa is just easier to less distracted, but please don't close your eyes if you're driving. So let's try eyes open this time. We always do the closed eyes before.

So that would be fun. In that case, it's just making sure you're sitting in a comfortable place. And if you are in a place where you can close your eyes and be still, then you can close your eyes. But if you're doing something which requires you to operate some machinery, then you should probably keep your eyes open. One of the things I like to tell people is to have a small smile on your face all the time, because that is a way of bringing presence of mind to the moment. So bring a smile to your face.

And if you can just take a deep breath. And exhale. And feel your entire body relax as you exhale. We'll do it a couple more times. Breathe in. Breathe out and relax. Breathe in. And breathe out and relax. And just notice any tightness or tension anywhere around the body, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, and soften and relax that tension. Now, once you've relaxed the body, bring your attention into the heart center in the chest and start to say in your mind, thank you, just these two simple words, thank you. You may say that a few times, and then see what comes up in the mind or in the heart.

Thank you for this body that I have. Thank you for the health that I currently have. Thank you for my eyes through which I can see, or my ears through which I can hear. Thank you for my brain and the functions that it does for my interaction with the world. Thank you for my heart that pumps blood throughout the body, providing it necessary oxygen and nutrition.

Thank you for my muscles that help me to move and interact with the world. Thank you for the organs in my body that bring balance, that provide all the things that I need in order to function in the world. Thank you for my arms and hands. Thank you for my legs that I'm able to walk around and go from place to place.

If those are belonging to you, that's wonderful. If you have whatever is in your body that allows you to function, thank that function for that being there. And then bring your attention to your smile. Thank you for allowing me to smile. Thank you for allowing me to have joy in my life. Thank you for the people that are there, whether it's my parents or my siblings or my relatives.

Thank you for my friends. Thank you for my partner or spouse, the people that interact with me and provide me with the things that I need, whether that's food or shelter or money, or giving me knowledge, our teachers, our elders, our mentors. Thank you for them. Thank you for the drinking water that we have. Thank you for the food that we have. Thank you for the shelter that we have. Thank you for the clean air that we may be in, for the environment that we may be in. Just keep thanking for things. The more you bring up things that bring you that gratitude, that bring you that awareness of all of the things that you have in your life, you can actually do this practice for an extended period of time.

will see that naturally there's joy and contentment available to us. So let's spend a couple of minutes to just internally start thanking the world and ourselves and the people around us for what we have. Let's just spend a couple of minutes in silence doing that. [silence] And I think now we can bring your attention back into the body and bring your awareness back to whatever is happening here. And if you have been closing your eyes, let's say, in stillness, you can open your eyes now.

Thank you, Delson, for granting you the rampage. Thank you, YouTube. Thank you, Internet, for us to experience the happiness for free. It's a modern miracle. Like in old times, people had to worry about being chased by a bear or whatever. Now we can just sit here and be grateful with Internet. Absolutely. Yeah. This is so great.

Do you also do gratitude practices yourself? When I can. I try to do it as best as I can first thing in the morning. And it's really nice to do that, because you wake up and you're like, oh, it's another day. Thank you for being able to breathe. And then I just get started. And sometimes it's only five minutes. Sometimes it's only 10 minutes. But there's so much to be grateful for. Yeah. There used to be times when I would do a gratitude practice for 15, 20 minutes at a time, or even just spend a whole 30 minutes in meditation doing that. And the amount of joy that comes up is just so wonderful and so harmonizing that sometimes you feel like you're floating when you're walking around.

So I would really recommend everyone to do it at least for two to five minutes the first time. First part of the day, or maybe just different parts of the day throughout, maybe you have a timer for before lunch or after lunch or before you go to sleep, or when you get back home, whatever it is. It really just elevates the mind and softens the edges of whatever we've been doing throughout the day.

Yeah, that's wonderful. I totally resonate. I do gratitude for you. Actually, that's funny. I swear I didn't know you were going to do a gratitude practice, but to look like on the same table, I have a gratitude journal. I want to just, oh my God, I want to show you this because I have a rainbow gratitude. Oh, wow. That's right. I just love cute and beautiful things. I use a different color for each gratitude. I use 10, so I have 10 colors. And when I left my last work, my ex-co-worker also gave me colorful pens because they know I like this. And it's funny, after years of practice, this became a really automatic thing.

So I don't do it daily anymore. But this morning I woke up and suddenly I had a thought that bothered me. That's why I went to here. This is real, literally happened today. I wrote it down, 10 with my colorful pen, and I'm all better. It's actually even more magical in the darkest times, but that is the time that's most difficult to do. That's why we try to do it consistently. When your gratitude muscle is strong, then during dark times, that's where you are going to shine. Good way of getting out of that darkness. Also, exactly. I like to use a journal as well. So when I journal, I don't really keep it that often, but when I do, I remember to have a journal with me, usually on my bedside. I'll just write after some practice, some reflections and insights that might have come up, and then kind of list out things that I'm grateful for. They can be anything from my health and my relationships with my family, with my friends and teachers, and so on.

And then kind of go into the things that I have in terms of the qualities that I have, that I'm able to have the wisdom to do certain things or the intelligence to do certain things. And you also get a feeling of abundance, right? Like anything can happen. That's the magical thing about the world, is anything can happen when you're in that space of gratitude.

Yeah. And you feel so powerful. Sometimes I'm grateful for things that have not even happened yet. I just feel it's going to happen. I thank for something in the future. When you're in that level, the episode. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a powerful process. Yeah. Oh, can I tell you something? Remember last retreat? Oh, see, this came up. I went to a retreat with Delson last year. So one identity revealed.

Remember, I was saying I felt so powerful, and I took out my glasses because I want to heal my vision. And it happened. It's not like a magical, like I suddenly have 2020 vision. But ever since I put my thought into it, I was feeling gratitude for my eyes, that I can see clearly. And I went from just a few months minus 2.75 to minus 2.25.

And now I feel it's even better. So I haven't checked yet, waiting for my insurance next year to check. But it feels already getting better and better. It's magical. Gratitude for future. Yeah. Cool. So just to give people some faith, is that this can actually work in real life. I did not plan on this. So another thing I want to ask you is, I really want to ask our guests to share their happiness journey.