Reflect on your present blessings, on which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
— Charles Dickens
What
The case for cultivating or practicing gratitude is strong; it doesn’t cost you anything, it doesn’t take much time or energy, it makes you feel good, has many proven benefits and no one likes an ingrate, or as Seneca put it, “Ingratitude … is an abomination.”
The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratus, meaning pleasing, agreeable, beloved, thankful and is closely related to grace and graciousness. Gratitude is considered by some researchers to be “the mother of all virtues” by encouraging patience, humility, and wisdom. Gratitude is one of the most basic social emotions, a deep-rooted human quality and primary motivator of benevolent behaviour towards other people (1,4).
Gratitude is an appreciation of the goodness in one’s life, and involves the humble recognition that goodness usually comes from outside of ourselves, from another person or a greater source (6). And so, gratitude is considered a spiritual practice by some, helping people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.
Research strongly and consistently associates gratitude with increased happiness, life satisfaction and optimism, less depression and aggression, improved physical health, sleep quality, mental strength and resilience to stress and adversity, higher self-esteem and improved relationships, better connection, empathy, compassion and goodwill towards others. What’s more, gratitude is a quality that individuals can cultivate fairly easily on their own and strengthen this mental state with use and practice. The choice to practice cultivating gratitude is an option we all have.
Gratitude encourages us to celebrate the present, to appreciate our experiences and focus on what we have right now rather than focusing on what we don’t have but think will make us happier and more satisfied if only we could we could obtain and rectify our sense of lack. Barriers to gratitude are shown to include traits like envy, materialism, narcissism and cynicism (1,6,11). Imagine the state of the world if our political leaders practiced cultivating gratitude!
Why
Numerous studies agree that cultivating and expressing gratitude has amazing benefits on our physical and psychological health, both for healthy adults and for those suffering from anxiety, depression and various medical conditions (17). Studies show benefits after just three weeks of practicing gratitude, with gratitude journalling shown to be a very beneficial practice with benefits lasting for a month (13), summarised as:
1. Gratitude is good for your health
Gratitude is shown to improve physical health by strengthening the immune system, lowering blood pressure, improving length and quality of sleep, encouraging more exercise, better self-care and healthier habits and reducing inflammation, aches and pains (6,9).
2. Gratitude feels good
Psychological benefits of practicing gratitude include increased positive emotions, better moods, greater optimism, well-being, joy, pleasure and appreciation for life, increased happiness, presence and vitality, reduced depression, negative thinking and toxic emotions that destroy happiness such as envy, resentment, frustration and regret, increased resilience, reduced stress and chance of burnout (4,15,18). Gratitude not only reduces stress, but it builds mental strength and resilience and helps people recover from trauma, adversity and suffering more quickly (6,8,10).
3. Gratitude improves relationships
Studies show that grateful people are more helpful, generous, and compassionate, more forgiving, more outgoing, less lonely and isolated, more likely to behave in benevolent manner even when others are less kind, and more likely to recognise how we are supported by and connected to other people, strengthening relationships and connections (4,6,11,14).
4. Gratitude supports success
There’s a saying that grateful people attract more to be grateful for. Research shows that gratitude improves self-esteem (2), reduces social comparisons and increases appreciation of other people’s accomplishments (1). Grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth (6), tempered with the understanding that we are dependent on each other. Workplace studies suggest that grateful managers motivate employees to work harder, that gratitude encourages employees to perform their jobs more effectively, feel more satisfied at work, and act more helpfully and respectfully toward their co-worker (1).
How
Here are some simple yet effective practices to cultivate gratitude on a regular basis:
1. Keep a Gratitude Journal.
Establish a daily or weekly practice of writing down five things you are grateful for, reminding yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things, no matter how small, in your life. Start with the intention to be more grateful and set aside time on a regular basis to increase your happiness and satisfaction with life. Make it a habit by doing it first thing in the morning, or before you go to bed.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. You do not need a fancy journal or to worry about spelling or grammar, but you do need to do it authentically. Thinking about gratitude alone or going through the motions will not work. The important thing is the feeling and making a habit of being grateful. Gratitude involves an emotion, a visceral feeling that we experience in the body. It’s this feeling, the energy of gratitude that imparts the benefits.
Take your time. Give yourself 15 minutes to really feel the depth of your gratitude by elaborating in detail about each person/pet/thing/experience/event/activity on your list. This is not just about listing the good things in your life, this is about feeling how grateful you truly are for having them in your life. Further advice to enhance this practice is to pay particular attention to the people (or pets) in your life to whom you are grateful as this is more impactful than focusing only on the things you are grateful for.
Practicing gratitude can be life-changing, in particular by changing the focus of your attention from what’s not working, to what is working, from what you don’t have, to what you do have, from the negative to the good in your life. This has significant impacts on mood, outlook, behaviour and ultimately, quality of life. Cultivating and expressing gratitude by speaking it or writing it down is more beneficial than just thinking about it as it makes us more aware of that which we are grateful for and deepens the emotional impact and allows to see the meaning of and connection between things in our life (1).
2) Express Thanks
Make it a practice, ie a habit or ritual, everyday, to tell your partner or a friend something you appreciate about them and thank the people that help you.
3) Meditate on Gratitude
Intentionally cultivate, intensify and appreciate gratitude and all you have to be thankful for with meditation. Try the practice included below or listen to our guided gratitude meditation.
4) Practice Self-Appreciation
Acknowledge yourself for something you have done or something about yourself that you are grateful for. Thank yourself for all the things about yourself you have taken for granted.
Wrap Up
Gratitude’s benefits take time, so be patient, keep your gratitude journal for six months or a year and see what benefits you experience. You may find gratitude becomes easier, more familiar and improves your mental health over time (18).
Just because gratitude is good doesn’t mean it’s easy. Gratitude is about forcing ourselves to pay attention to the good things in life we’d otherwise take for granted. It works by changing mental habits, focusing our attention on grateful thoughts and letting go of ungrateful thoughts. Life is not always pleasurable, and sometimes you just have to accept life as it is and be grateful for what you have.
We all have the ability and opportunity to practice gratitude. Simply take a few moments to focus on the good in your life and appreciate what you have, rather than focusing on what you think you lack or complaining about all the things you think you deserve. Developing an “attitude of gratitude” is one of the simplest ways to increase your happiness and satisfaction with life. Give it a go, you’ll be thankful you did!
Practice
Cultivating Gratitude Exercise (or listen to a guided version here)
Gratitude is a positive emotional response with an energetic component we feel in the body. It feels good and is good for us.
1. Sit or lie down in a relaxed and comfortable position. Gentle close your eyes or soften your focus. Bring to mind a recent positive or pleasurable experience, one that made you feel happy, joyful, content, or grateful. Perhaps an experience with another person, a pet, something that happened, you did or achieved.
2. Take a moment to soak up the experience and how it made you feel, allow yourself to relive the moment and how good it made you feel. Really feel the sense of gratitude for that moment, for that person, pet, event or activity. What does this sense of gratitude feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? What do the physical sensations of gratitude feel like in your body? Notice how they change, notice the intensity of the feelings. Pay attention to the feeling of the sensations in your body and keep bring your attention back to the feeling of gratitude in your body whenever your mind inevitably strays. This is healthy energy. It is attractive energy and it tends to attract more things to be grateful for.
3. Practice staying with the feeling of gratitude in your body and be mindful of thoughts and emotions that arise as you do, without touching emotions or getting caught up in thoughts. Practice simple noticing, labelling what arises if that helps, then drop the label and let go of the thought or emotion by returning your attention to the feeling of gratitude in your body.
4. Now turn the feeling up. Make it more intense, increase the feeling of gratitude within you and let it soak into your entire body: muscles, bones, organs, cells … you can use visualisation to help increase the feeling of gratitude in your body by either imagining a dial in front of you and turning it all the way up to full, or asking yourself, if gratitude had a colour, what colour would it be? Allow a colour to show up for you – it matters not the colour, go with the first colour you are aware of and make it brighter, more intense. Turn up the feeling of gratitude within you and rest in this feeling for a few moments. Really let it soak in.
5. When you are ready, let go of the visualisation, let go of focusing on the feeling of gratitude, take a few deep, conscious breaths and slowly bring your awareness back to the room or the space you are in, feel your body sitting or lying on the surface below you. Gently open your eyes when you are ready and take a moment or two to readjust.
Enjoy our free guided gratitude meditation on SoundCloud.
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References and Bibliography
1. Allen, S. (2018), The Science of Gratitude, Greater Good Science Centre, UC Berkeley
2. Chen, L.H and Wu, C., Gratitude Enhances Change in Athletes’ Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Trust in Coach (2014) Journal of Applied Spry Psychology, Vol 26, Issue 3, https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2014.889255
3. Cohn, M.A., Fredrickson, B.L., Brown, S.L., Mikels, J.A., Conway, A.M. (2009). Happiness Unpacked: Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction by Building Resilience, Emotion, 2009, Vol. 9, No. 3, 361–368
4. Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377–389. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.84.2.377
5. Emmons, R. A., & Stern, R. (2013). Gratitude as a psychotherapeutic intervention. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(8), 846–855. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22020
6. Emmons, R. (2010), Why Gratitude is Good, Grater Good Magazine, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good
7. Emmons, R. (2010), 10 Ways to Become More Grateful, Greater Good Magazine, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_ways_to_become_more_grateful1
8. Hanson, R. 2011. Hardwiring happiness: The new brain science of contentment, calm, and confidence. New York: Harmony.
9. Hill, P. L., Allemand, M., & Roberts, B. W. (2013). Examining the pathways between gratitude and self-rated physical health across adulthood. Personality and Individual Differences, 54(1), 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. paid.2012.08.011
10. Kashdan, T. B., Uswatte, G., & Julian, T. (2006). Gratitude and hedonic and eudaimonic well-being in Vietnam war veterans. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(2), 177–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.01.005
11. McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., Emmons, R. A., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect? Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 249–266. https://doi. org/10.1037//0033-2909.127.2.249
12. Morin, A., 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude (2015), Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201504/7-scientifically-proven-benefits-gratitude
13. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410–421. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.5.410
14. Smith, A., Pedersen, E. J., Forster, D. E., McCullough, M. E., & Lieberman, D. (2017). Cooperation: The roles of interpersonal value and gratitude. Evolution and Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.08.003
15. Watkins, P. C., Uhder, J., & Pichinevskiy, S. (2015). Grateful recounting enhances subjective well-being: The importance of grateful processing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 10(2), 91–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743976 0.2014.927909
16. Watkins, P. C., Woodward, K., Stone, T., & Kolts, R. L. (2003). Gratitude and Happiness: Development of a Measure of Gratitude, and Relationships With Subjective Well-Being. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 31(5), 431–451. https://doi.org/10.2224/ sbp.2003.31.5.431
17. Wong, J., Owen, J., Gabana, N. T., Brown, J. W., Mcinnis, S., Toth, P., & Gilman, L. (2016). Does gratitude writing improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial. Psychotherapy Research, 28(2), 192-202. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307 .2016.1169332
18. Wong, J., Brown, J., (2017) How Gratitude Changes Your Brain, Greater Good Magazine, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain
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