What do the happiest people on the planet have in common? Gratitude.
Gratitude is your ability to see life’s circumstances and appreciate what you already have. It doesn’t require a life overhaul, it’s free, and it’s a practice that is readily available to everyone.
The best part is it can have an immense positive impact on your life.
What is Gratitude?
Gratitude, in its finest form, is a state of being. Having a gratitude practice is what we do on the journey to becoming a grateful person. Initially, practicing gratitude may feel contrived. First off, it’s wildly simple to do. So simple, that you may not be able to imagine how something so simple could have such a large positive impact on your life. Secondly, our minds have a natural tendency to relish in negativity. For this reason, it may feel forced to try and be grateful when all we really want to do is be mad, irritated, etc. However, when we practice gratitude on a regular basis (daily is best), we become grateful people and that cloud of negativity is less likely to creep in.
Here, it might be important to distinguish the difference between being grateful and feeling grateful. For instance, when in a challenging situation, let’s say the loss of a loved one, you may be grateful for your time with them or the memories you have, but in the midst of sadness, you may not have the warm and positive emotions that come with feeling grateful. So you can be grateful, but not always feel it. Regardless, having gratitude has been proven to help through difficult times (more on this later), even if you aren’t experiencing the warm fuzzies all over.
Why Practice Gratitude?
The practice of gratitude, when done consistently, creates a shift in your mental state. You may be familiar with the phrase “you get what you look for.” When you readily look for things to appreciate, you’ll begin to experience more positive feelings such as acceptance, optimism, and open-mindedness. When you see over and over what you don’t have, you experience more negative emotions like pessimism, criticism, and feeling down on yourself. In addition to positive feelings, there are numerous reasons to cultivate an attitude of gratitude:
Improved physical health – Gratitude has been linked to improved sleep, reduced blood pressure, fewer aches and pains, and an increase in exercise. In a study done by researchers at the University of Manchester, they found that a gratitude practice led to better, more positive thoughts before bedtime, which in turn led to reduced time falling asleep, as well as longer and better sleep.
Builds stronger relationships – Research in the areas of gratitude and relationships have found a positive impact on friendships, romantic relationships, and becoming more effective at managing people. Why? Practicing gratitude can lead to an individual being more open and vulnerable, which tends to attract more people. When you practice gratitude, you’re also inclined to look for the good, which inevitably enhances a relationship. In the book The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy speaks to a gratitude practice he did that made a huge impact on his marriage. Every day for a year, he wrote down what he loved about his wife—how she interacted with friends, took care of the dogs, etc. At the end of the year, he gave it to her as a present. The gift brought her to tears and undoubtedly strengthened their marriage. He then shared the experience with a friend who was amidst a crumbling marriage. Darren had noticed the friend complain and complain about all the things his wife did that annoyed him. So he suggested writing down one thing he loved about her every day… and wouldn’t you know? His friend’s marriage is stronger than ever.
Reduced stress and ability to handle adversity – You’ve probably noticed how two people can be put in a stressful situation and one will thrive and one will dive. While many attributes can affect how you handle stress, gratitude is certainly one that plays a key role in how resilient you are to a situation. Dr. Emmons, a world leading scientific expert on gratitude, is often asked whether people should feel grateful in dire circumstances. His response, “not only will a grateful attitude help—it is essential. In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.”
More giving – Tony Robbins, thought leader and business strategist states, “the secret to living is giving.” No doubt it feels good to give, but it actually leaves a lasting impact on the recipient and makes it more likely for them to return the gesture to the original benefactor or to a third party. So giving is the gift that keeps giving!
Enhance psychological well-being – An interesting point to make here is that psychological well-being is a little different than your emotional well-being. While they do correlate, psychological well-being is concerned with living a meaningful life. Studies show that having gratitude lowers the risk of depression, anxiety, addictive diagnones, and certain eating disorders. Furthermore, gratitude enhances eudaimonic well being, which is the feeling that one’s life is meaningful and it’s being lived to the fullest.
There are so many more reasons to practice gratitude, but application is always the most effective way to discover the value of any practice. Plus, that’s what we promised in this blog post. So let’s get to it!
Ways to Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude
Keep a Gratitude journal – this is the most well-known way to practice gratitude. While it might be useful to track things you are grateful for in your head, putting pen to paper makes the appreciation real. The simple acts of developing conscious thoughts and selecting your own words and meaning around your moments of gratitude strengthens your awareness and supports the patterning of the mind to see more of these moments. Plus, you then have it written down to return to when times get tough or you need to be reminded of all the things you have to appreciate.
Avoid comparisons and judgemental thoughts – “Comparison is the thief of all joy.” Whether you’re comparing upward or downward, comparison has a sneaky way of measuring whether you’re “enough”. Measure upward and you immediately feel like you’re not pretty enough, smart enough, or not doing enough. Measuring downward, sure, you’ll feel better about your circumstance for a moment, but eventually comparison comes back to nip you in the butt. Instead, appreciate where you are, what you have, and acknowledge how far you’ve come on your personal journey.
State appreciation – if you appreciate someone, even for the smallest thing that they do, be sure to say it! Verbal acknowledgements are always a great way to share with someone how grateful you are for them. If they’re far away or you need to switch up your tactic, Thank You cards, small gifts, or even a smile show someone how much they mean to you.
Practice meditation – Meditation and mindfulness practices are known to reduce judgemental thoughts, which in turn reduces negative feelings. More specifically, one of the best meditations to help to cultivate gratitude is metta meditation. Metta meditations focus on loving-kindness towards others and yourself. It typically involves sending positive affirmations towards those that are easy to love, such as a baby or your spouse, to those that are more difficult to love, like someone who has hurt you, and everyone in between. An example of a phrase you might state in your mind is “may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe and free from all suffering.”
Focus on the small stuff – The best part about practicing gratitude, is that it doesn’t have to be some grandiose event or life endeavor that you have to be grateful for. In fact, it’s best not to reserve your appreciation only to those things since they come around so rarely. Gratitude is more about appreciating the smaller things on a more regular basis so that the feeling accumulates over time. In this way, consider these actions like repetitions, or weight-lifting for your gratitude “muscles”. You can be grateful for a tangible object, such as your hot cup of coffee in the morning or the amazing plant you were given from Ivy Dayton, or it can be intangible, such as witnessing a beautiful sunset (like the Rt. 741 sunsets in Dayton, OH) or catching multiple green lights when you’re running late.
Look for and appreciate the good in every situation – while some gratitude articles attest to looking for the silver lining, this is a practice that I personally have put into place for many years, even in the hardest of times. It’s not easy to do, but it has made a big impact in my ability to move forward in tough times. Here’s the philosophy I follow:
Consider there is a lesson in every situation you experience. That lesson may inform how you act in the future. For instance, the Covid-19 pandemic forced the instructors of Ignite Yoga to use technology. Every session was a challenge and many times we felt like failures when the microphone wouldn’t work, the internet would go out, or when students experienced trouble using Zoom. However, for me, even when the feeling of failure was very present, I simultaneously practiced gratitude, knowing that every failure also meant getting better. It also allowed me to show up for the instructors and work through the challenge together.
As humans, our default is survival. Gratitude goes against the notion that everything is a threat and instead helps us view them as gifts. Additionally, our yoga texts encourage us to practice gratitude and reciprocity. Consider how much we are inherently given from nature—the earth to walk on, the air to breathe, fire to warm us, water to hydrate our bodies, and __, and __… These are things we take for granted every day and perhaps (perhaps) we can instead give back, or at the very least appreciate. With the practice of gratitude, we begin to see how much we have and feel the abundance. We feel satisfied with what we have and alleviate that nagging need to accumulate more. Notice how that need never gets satiated? Often, we just keep wanting more and yet never reach the moving target of the peak. Life is hard enough. Do yourself a solid, begin adding ease and fulfillment through the practices of gratitude.
Want to learn more about the practice of gratitude? We recommend these books.
One Response