Being grateful in the present moment sounds like one of those pop-psych concepts which you see every day on the internet, not often practiced but talked about a lot by our society.
You’ll be a lot happier and content with life if you do it correctly and continuously, all it takes is a pen and piece of paper, and a few minutes of your time.
Even as small as 5 minutes per day can have a huge impact on your mental health. To start, I'll give you an example of how to write a simple and short gratitude list.
I’m grateful about...
My Health
My Family
My belongings
This house
My friends
You might ask, how something simple as this can make me happy. I've gotta be frank you might not instantly feel happy or energized, you need to do this every day and incrementally it will affect your mood.
You can be more specific and use names in your own list/journal, you can also use subtraction instead of addition in your list, like how would your life be if a certain person didn’t exist in your life? Would you be happier? You can be grateful for the negative outcomes you avoided.
Remember you must write regularly if you want to benefit from this exercise.
As Oprah says it best, I needed to “think about what I know for sure.”
Gratitude focuses your subconscious mind on certainties of life, of what you have control over, what you can change, therefore it’s beneficial to your mental health.