Thanksgiving offers the opportunity to do something we should really be doing every day of the year: Thinking about, and expressing, what we're grateful for. And really, there's a whole host of reasons why we should make gratitude a daily practice.
We all like being thanked. It's a great feeling when it's sincere, and not perfunctory. Being thanked and having reason to thank others are two sides of the same gratefulness coin. Both exemplify the positive in human behavior and provide us with a positive charge that boosts our emotional balance. People feel and express gratitude in multiple ways. They can apply it to the past (retrieving positive memories), the present (not taking good fortune for granted as it comes), and the future (maintaining a hopeful and optimistic attitude).
Regardless the "why", it's a quality that we all can, and should, cultivate.
Grateful people are more stress resistant. There are a number of studies showing that in the face of serious trauma, adversity, and suffering, if people have a grateful disposition, they’ll recover more quickly. Gratitude gives people a perspective from which they can interpret negative life events and help them guard against post-traumatic stress and lasting anxiety.
Gratitude makes us nicer. As a result, it helps us make more friends and deepen our existing relationships.
Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. Gratitude actually magnifies positive emotions. Research on emotion shows that positive emotions fade quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house, don’t feel so new and exciting anymore. But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and this makes us less likely to take it for granted. As a result, gratitude allows us to participate more fully in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures we get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things - movies, computer screens, sports - but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.
Gratitude helps us come to terms with the past. Our memories are not set in stone. There are dozens of ways our memories get changed over time – we remember things as being worse than they actually were, as being longer or shorter, people as being kinder or crueler, as being more or less interesting, and so on. Experiencing gratitude in the present makes us more likely to remember positive memories, and actually transforms some of our neutral or even negative memories into positive ones. In one study, putting people into a grateful mood helped them find closure of upsetting memories. During these experiences, participants were more likely to recall positive aspects of the memory than usual, and some of the negative and neutral aspects were transformed into positives.
Gratitude makes us less aggressive. If you count your blessings, you're more likely to empathize with other people. In an article in Medical News Today, Professor Nathan DeWall is quoted as saying "I wanted to bust the myth that only certain people are grateful... Gratitude is an equal opportunity emotion that causes lower levels of aggression." An activity as basic as writing a letter or mentally counting your blessings can be enough to decrease aggression. "Take a step back, and look at what you've got," said DeWall. "Don't spend every waking moment being grateful, but one time a week definitely increases your well-being over time. And if you get bad news you're given a shot that protects you."
Gratitude lessens the desire for material satisfaction. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. The problem with materialism is that it makes us feel less competent, it reduces our ability to appreciate and enjoy the good in life, it generates negative emotions, and makes us more self-centered.
Gratitude can even help in the workplace.
Gratitude makes you a more effective manager. Effective management requires a toolbox of skills. Criticism comes all too easily to most, while the ability to feel gratitude and express praise is often lacking. Timely, sincere, specific, behavior focused praise to be highly motivating and is often a more powerful method of influencing change than criticism. Contrary to expectation, if praise is moderate and behavior focused, repeat expressions of gratitude will not lose their impact, and employee performance will increase.
And it's healthy too! Gratitude increases sleep quality, reduces the time required to fall asleep, and can help with insomnia. The key is what’s on our minds as we’re trying to fall asleep. If it’s worries about the kids, or anxiety about work, the level of stress in our body will increase, reducing sleep quality, and keeping us awake. Gratitude can’t cure cancer (neither can positive-thinking), but it can strengthen your physiological functioning. Some recent science have shown that those who engage in gratitude practices have been shown to feel less pain, go to the doctor less often, have lower blood pressure, and be less likely to develop a mental disorder.
Try these 7 easy tips:
- Keep a daily gratitude journal. It only takes 5 minutes a day. Participants in studies who have done this have reported significant benefits after just ten weeks.
What a deal to reap all these benefits!
- Overcome the obstacles. Two obstacles to being grateful are forgetfulness and lack of awareness. You can counter them by giving yourself visual cues that trigger thoughts of gratitude. Place Post-It notes where you'll see them as simple reminders.
- Vow Not to Complain. We are all guilty of complaining, and, quite frankly, it feels good, right? But our complaining creates negativity in our lives, which attracts even more negativity. Psychologists say that it takes a minimum of 21 days to form a new habit. Again, it will take awareness to first recognize your bad habit. But awareness is the first step. Can you stop complaining for 21 days?
- Find a grateful person and spend more time them. If we hang out with ungrateful people, their attitude tends to rub off on us. If you have a grateful people in your life, the influence will be in another direction.
- Think of every day as a gift. When you awake, take a moment to reflect on all that you're grateful for - a warm bed, the birds singing outside, the ability to work, the hot cup of coffee that awaits you, the eager smile of your child, and the gift of being alive for another day. Starting the day in gratitude helps to affirm the abundance that surrounds us, and if we continually think about this abundance, we will attract even more of it and feel uplifted.
- Show and Speak Your Gratitude. Did you ever receive an unexpected note or letter where a person poured their heart out in thanks for something that you did for them? What a great feeling to be the recipient of such gratitude. There are so many opportunities in life where we can send a simple thank you note, which could make someone's day. Think about who you can say thank you to either in person or in a note. It can be for simple things, but it should be heartfelt. Then do it!
- Return to simpler things. Don't race through life as if it's a contest. In modern life, we're too often consumed by answering e-mails and cell phones. Slow down and be in the present. Think about some of the things you can do that make you happy such as swimming, hiking, bike riding, dancing all night long, cooking dinner for a friend, looking at the stars, sitting on the porch for hours in the summer, having a hearty laugh, or playing with your child. Take the time now to enjoy the simpler things!
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." - Melody Beattie
