I am trying to answer your questions:
I do feel grateful while I am journaling. Since I do it at the end of each day or on the following morning, during the day I now tend to look for what I can be grateful for. I think this puts me into a positive frame of mind and assists in making others around me feel happy when I interact with them. I believe that feeling acknowledged through thank-you's by a person makes a person feel better.
I do not have much of a social life at the moment, so I do not go out much. I still believe that the simple awareness of trying to find things you can be grateful for is a step in the right direction. If the deep feelings of gratefulness do not come up at the start, I suggest that you still make an attempt to be grateful. Your state of mind will slowly change with persistence towards your goal, which is being grateful. Out of that I believe more benefits will be gained in terms of quality of life.
I think overall our body behaves according to the conditions of our mind. I do believe that our body language mirrors our feelings and triggers a response from people around us. So I do breathe more deeply when I am relaxed. I mostly speak inside my mind, not aloud even if I am mostly alone during the day. In my mind I talk about my problems and how to solve them. However, I have come to the conclusion that a follow-up on paper is essential for my ideas to work out through appropriate actions.
When I am upset or worried, I tend to appear sad or at least very quiet. I am a rather outgoing person under normal conditions.
I have had a positive effect by using a combination of the Happy for No Reasons Paraliminal and the book with the same title.
My main problem is that I am a big procrastinator, so I postpone all unpleasant duties, ie mostly those which would actually help to change my current situation. This sounds rather crazy, but I am working on this to move ahead in my life.
I hope you can find something useful in my message.
