For many, one of the most powerful tools in recovery is gratitude. At the beginning of recovery, gratitude can be a lot of work. However, with time and practice, it can become an easy and effective part of the day and of recovery.

If you are new to recovery and to gratitude, have patience with yourself. When the process of recovery is started, your life might be a mess. And when that’s the case, it can be hard to find much to be grateful for. But stick with it. One place to start is with a gratitude list. Every day, list a few things that you are grateful for that day. They can be simple things, such as having food to eat or a roof over your head. As you make a habit of it, you will be begin to see more things in your life that you can be grateful for. When you have things in life that you are grateful for, your general outlook on life is improved and helps ease the recovery process.

If you are struggling to believe this assertion, there is research to back it up. Thousands of in-depth interviews were conducted examining the causes and underlying factors of happiness. Through these interviews, one meaningful difference between happy and unhappy people was identified. The difference? Happy people are grateful for what they have, and unhappy people are not.

People who are grateful for what they have tend to focus on their strengths instead of their weaknesses. In turn, this makes them more hopeful, less stressed, less likely to get stuck in shame and depression, and more likely to recover from serious life issues, such as addiction. Gratitude is a powerful medicine- even for a disease as cunning, baffling, and powerful as addiction.