Gratitude is the feeling of appreciating the good things in your life, big or small.

It might be a kind gesture from a friend, a beautiful day, or a moment when someone helped you out.

When you stop to notice these things, your attention shifts away from what’s missing or stressful and toward what’s going well.

It also helps your relationships, because people feel valued when you thank them.

Studies link a regular gratitude habit with lower stress, better sleep and greater happiness.Spiritual traditions have taught this for centuries.

In this article, we talk about five well-known teachers- Sadhguru, Gaur Gopal Das, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, and their about how gratitude can change the way we live.Sadhguru: Dropping the illusion of independenceGratitude isn't something you force or tick off a list.

Sadhguru describes it as a state of being that reconnects you with life, and he says it shows up on its own once you stop believing you're independent.

Most of us spend our days weighing what we have against what we want, and that leaves us anxious, greedy and short on contentment.

Sadhguru, in his podcast, suggests stopping to notice how little of your life you produce yourself.

You can't go a single moment without air, you eat food grown in soil you never tended, and you drink water that reached you through other people's hands.

Once you see that, the ego begins to melt, and you go from demanding things from the world to simply receiving them.

He says, take ten seconds before a meal, or a moment when you wake up, to acknowledge how lucky you are to be alive.Gaur Gopal Das: The tooth analogyGaur Gopal Das at an event talked about the tooth analogy.

Your tongue keeps going to the one broken tooth and pays no attention to the other thirty-one healthy ones, and the mind does much the same, locking onto a single problem while missing everything that's going well.

He says gratitude is a conscious choice to look wider.

You don't have to deny your pain or pretend life is perfect, but your struggles shouldn't blot out what you have.

Seeing the whole mouth instead of one tooth is the point.

He also flips the usual order.

Joy doesn't cause gratitude, he says; practicing gratitude is what brings happiness.

Train your mind to look for the good, and over time you build a calm that outside events have a hard time shaking.

Your circumstances stay....