In the 1980s, I was attending an intense personal growth workshop in Deerwood, Minnesota. One night, as I lay on the top bunk in a rustic dorm room filled with a dozen women, someone mentioned her practice of gratitude.
Aware of my natural tendency to focus on the half-empty cup, I decided to try it that night. I did it again the next night and the next. Now, nearly 30 years later, I still continue a daily practice of gratitude.
Why?
Gratitude shifts my attention to the positive, improves my perspective, and helps me appreciate what is working well in my life. This increases my energy and my happiness. Not a bad outcome for an investment of a few minutes a day!
Could Gratitude Help You?
It’s easy to drift into focusing on the negative, the problems, and what isn’t working in your life. But what you focus on expands.
Focusing on the negative and on problems gets you more of that, not the joy and fulfillment you long for.
If you could use a little improvement in your attitude (and who couldn’t!) gratitude can be very helpful.
Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Davis, says gratitude is
“An attitude we can choose that makes life better for ourselves and for other people. I think about it as the best approach to life. . . When things go well gratitude enables us to savor things going well. When things go poorly gratitude enables us to get over those situations and realize they are temporary.”
Psychologists, spiritual teachers, writers, and researchers say that gratitude can:
- Increase your energy and optimism
- Shift your focus to what has gone well or delighted you
- Help you not take things for granted
- Make you more resilient to life’s hassles and stress
- Encourage your satisfaction with life
- Increase your compassion
- Enrich your experience of life
- Increase your happiness and well being
- Improve your health
Who doesn’t want some or all of this?!?!
Grateful to Whom?
Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity church, wrote
“It has been found by experience that a person increases his blessings by being grateful for what he has. Gratitude even on the mental plane is a great magnet. When gratitude is expressed from the spiritual standpoint it is powerfully augmented.”
If you believe in God, a Supreme Being, the Universe, or a Higher Power, send your gratitude in those directions. If you don’t believe or aren’t sure what you believe in, focus more on what you’re grateful for and don’t worry about to what or whom you are grateful. It will still work!
In Your Life
So how do you incorporate more gratitude into your life? Here are two suggestions.
1) Begin with a big infusion of gratitude. Take 5 or 10 or even 30 minutes right now. Write as many things as you can think of for which you are grateful. Notice how writing this list changes your energy.
2) Start a gratitude journal, each night writing five things for which you are grateful.
Knowing you’ll be doing this each evening will raise your awareness and attention throughout the day. “Oh, I need to remember that tonight.” “What am I going to be grateful for this evening?”
Practice gratitude and see how it changes your life.
What are you grateful for? Click on Comments below and share with us.
Photo courtesy of TheAlieness, Gisela Giardino on flickr.com
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
This is such an incredibly valuable practice and admire your ability to stick with it for so long. I have no doubt it’s made a tremendous difference in your life. I’m a half empty person myself and when I make a conscious effort to shift my focus it’s a whole body experience. What you say is true, almost like a light switch, I can feel it change my body chemistry and my thoughts and it infuses me with energy. Thanks for the reminder to pick up my gratitude journal. I’ve missed it.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for sharing those tips, especially putting the emphasis on expressing gratitude.
A colleague and I are recording some tips for reducing holiday stress for our subscribers. One of my favorite tips for reducing holiday stress is to discover what rituals or activities are meaningful to you and your family rather than trying to recreate your mom or grandma’s holiday. When my kids were young we created a gingerbread house, complete with a candle inside and artificial snow, miniature trees and gingerbread men outside. Although my mom baked during the holidays, for whatever reason she never got into cookies and such. As a mom I enjoyed making hand cookies and decorated cookies that the kids could get involved in. We made enough to give bags of them to our neighbors.
Now that my kids and grandkids are grown, I’m very grateful that I made the time to create wonderful pictures and warm memories during the holidays and throughout the year.
Dorothy, it’s amazing how much we have in common! Glad this served to remind you to pick up your gratitude journal. Gratitude is something we can’t overdo.
You’re welcome, Flora. I totally agree with your idea for choosing the activities and rituals that are meaningful to you. I do that as a way of reducing my holiday stress. How wonderful your family has these special warm memories. Priceless!
Bonnie, this is wonderful. I spend every day in gratitude for everything that happens. I have learned that an attitude of gratitude makes everything easier, especially if it’s a hiccup in the day. I guess over the years I have just learned that staying positive makes life easier. And I have tried to teach others how to do this – some still don’t get it because they are so invested in being negative, so that’s what they get!
Hi, Ruth! Thank you. I’m glad you like this. An attitude of gratitude does indeed make everything easier.
I love the idea of a gratitude practice and have done it sporadically over the years. Thanks so much for this reminder of the wonderful power of expressing gratitude daily!
You’re most welcome, Margie. I hope this reminder will cause you to to experiment with a more regular practice of gratitude.
I am so down these days and as I read all this on graditude I wonder if its my problem. I feel like i can’t get a long with my kids anymore and I feel like my grand kids are being a head ache. (i raised 3 of them for 0ver 15 years) and they still like to fight me. I try to shut up but when they leave i’m torn in bits and pieces and end up crying all day. Please someone help me to get some of this graditude and pull me out of the rut that i’m in.
Linda, thanks for your comments here. I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling down. Why not try a gratitude practice? It couldn’t hurt. Everyday write down at least 3 things you are grateful for. No matter how large or small. It could be as seemingly “small” as grateful for making it through the day. Grateful for a roof over your head. Grateful for food on the table. Let yourself take that in, breathe it in, feel your gratitude as best you can. Try this for 3 weeks and notice what happens. Let me know how you’re doing.
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