Although it can be a real drag to consciously remind ourselves to do it every day, practicing gratitude is one of the most effective ways to improve our quality of life.

It also doesn’t require us to expend as much effort as we might think. We are often taught to think that we can only be thankful for our most major blessings, such as love, wealth, and good health, but we are also capable of looking at it from other perspectives. In fact, it could be argued that the real power of gratitude often lies in recognizing the small and easily overlooked moments that give us a reason to smile every day.

This might include everything from enjoying our favorite kind of hot beverage on a chilly winter morning, the moments when everything is quiet and peaceful as we lie down to sleep, or taking a walk and seeing the beauty of nature at any point in the year. Even the trivial pastime of looking at memes can make a welcome addition to your arsenal of things that make you feel thankful. 

All that these tiny sparks of positivity are asking for is a moment of our attention. When we allow ourselves to appreciate them, they can shift our perspective from a more stressed or negative mindset to an appreciation that there is good in the world, and all of us have some kind of access to it. Considering it involves such a minimal investment of our energy, the payoff is hard to argue with. We all have to do our best to find happiness where we can, and we are lucky that we have memes here to help us with that.