THE AMAZING BENEFIT OF GRATITUDE
THE BIG BENEFIT OF GRATITUDE
When life feels rough and overwhelming, gratitude might be the furthest thing from our minds. After a breakup or divorce, it can be even further from our grasp.
The funny thing about gratitude is that you don’t have to feel it in order to practice it.
In fact, the practice is what brings about the feeling!
Gratitude starts like a tiny seed. You have to tend to it carefully in the beginning and then it starts to grow. The growth is slow but it is sure. Gratitude has a cumulative effect over time and it starts to become a natural part of our days.
In fact, gratitude actually changes our brains. We tend to be wired toward the negative in life and gratitude reverses that wiring. I am not qualified to teach on this, but Positive Psychology has a great article about The Neuroscience of Gratitude and How It Affects Anxiety and Grief. It is worth the read!
I love the phrase “gratitude practice” because it makes it clear that we need to be as consistent as we can. It is no different than “piano practice” or “baseball practice”. If we want to improve, we need to take the time to DO IT!
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ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE
Adding a gratitude practice into our daily lives is key to developing a more positive outlook on life.
Why should we care about our outlook, you ask?
Because our brains are wired to consistently confirm what it already believes. There is a name for it: confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs.
This bias will work against us in a number of areas such as exploring new ideas about politics and the world, but it also plays out in what we believe about ourselves and about life.
I have a tendency to be a little anxious when I go to a social gathering. In the past, I would tend to think of all the stupid things I might say, all the people that would have no interest in me, and the overwhelming unease I would feel at the gathering. So, as you might guess, my brain picked up on all of those things because they were what I expected, so I interpreted information to mean what I believed would happen.
For a period of time, I worked with a counselor on this and she suggested that I start practicing wonder:
- I wonder what adventure might await me at this event.
- I wonder who I will meet at this event.
- I wonder what new opportunity I will find at this event.
- I wonder what new things I will learn at this event.
This took time and practice, but these days I don’t tend to rush headlong into my old catastrophic thinking. Is every event I go to amazing and full of adventure. No! But I do tend to be more open to new things and how those things turn out. I also don’t worry very much when I feel uncomfortable or have a lag in a conversation.
HOW DOES GRATITUDE HELP US?
Gratitude starts slowly turning a big ol’ ship onto a new course. We often spend a lot of our lives in a negative thought pattern, so it takes time to see results. Once we start seeing results, we need to stay consistent in our gratitude practice, because like all things in life, we tend to revert back to old ways if we’re not careful.
Keep in mind that you are forming new neural pathways and this is something that requires focus and tenacity. We haven’t lived thirty, forty, or fifty years of life allowing our thought patterns to be in charge without some work needed to make changes.
This is what you need to start your gratitude practice:
- Journal
- Pen
That’s it! Feel free to use a notes app on your phone, if you like that better.
- Start small. If your life feels very heavy and frustrating right now, you will probably not be able to think of 10 major things to be grateful for right off the bat.
- Start with writing down 5 things in the morning and 5 before bed. They can be as small as you want them to be. Maybe you have a cute pair of socks on. Or your cat is snuggling with you and it makes you feel loved. Perhaps your house is clean.
- Allow yourself some time to really think and scan over your home, your heart, and your life.
- Write down whatever works for you. No one is grading this!
- A little bonus idea is to write down how each gratitude item made you feel.
- Do this every day.
Guess what is going to start happening? Your brain is going to start finding more things to be grateful for simply because you are looking for them. And the cool thing? A lot of those things have been in your life all along, you just weren’t paying attention.
This is where the magic starts happening. The more you focus attention on the goodness in your day, the more goodness you will see. Remember that our brain is always trying to confirm what it already believes. You are moving from “my life really sucks” to “there is abundant beauty in my life”.
Also, not only will you see more of the goodness that already exists, you will start moving toward more goodness coming your way. We tend to attract based on the energy that we put out into the world, so better energy is drawn into your life
Showing appreciation daily is not going to make your life perfect. You will not be happy all the time. Life will not cease to be a significant struggle on some days.
It will, however, bring more of the goodness in life straight into your vision.
My biggest encouragement to you is don’t give up! Changes are not made overnight. Sticking with a gratitude practice will bring slow changes over time, but you will start to notice that life feels lighter, brighter, and happier as you persist!
Press in, my friend!
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