“For me, gratitude is a mindfulness practice – it’s a practice of being in the moment which allows you to feel a bit more in control. When we feel lost or stressed and we feel out of control with what’s happening in our lives or around us, I think gratitude can anchor us and give us that sense of grounding that we need.

“In my mid-20s I had a quarter-life crisis. My career wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, my family relationships were not working, my friendships were not quite working and I ended up breaking up with my long term boyfriend. So everything outside of me seemed to be falling apart. I used to wake up really frustrated, anxious and unhappy, almost in tears every morning.

“So I decided to stop pointing fingers and find out what was going on. I found this retreat in Brighton and the title of the retreat was ‘How to wake up smiling,’ so I went to it – it was a Buddhist retreat. And the whole premise of what the monk was saying was actually based in gratitude. He explained how, as children, we wake up excited looking forward to the day, looking for the opportunities and the gifts and joys in life. But as we grow older life happens – we have bills to pay, we have doctor appointments, we have work – and we forget that excitement, we forget those gifts. And he used this analogy: think of your life as being given a basket each morning, and your task is to collect all the precious gifts during the day. So at the end of the day, you have this basket full of precious gifts.

How (and why) you should practise gratitude, according to an expert