Gratitude is often recommended as an effective way to support wellness. At face value, it does sound good - it is logical that feeling grateful boosts mental wellness at least - but I’m a bit skeptical, as feeling grateful and positive all the time doesn’t seem genuine or healthy! I’d like to share what I’ve learned after reading up on what ‘practising gratitude’ actually means, what the benefits are, and how to incorporate it into daily life while, at the same time, avoiding toxic positivity.
What is gratitude?
Starting with the basics, ‘gratitude’ means feeling thankful for the good in your life, including both the tangible and intangible. ‘Practising’ gratitude is a two-step process where first, you notice something to be thankful for, and second, you act on that in whichever way works for you. You might feel thankful for a person in your life, or for something that someone has done for you, and you may express that by thanking them verbally, in a letter or note, or through a different act such as helping them with something or spending quality time with them. The practice is not limited to feeling thankful for other people, it also includes gratitude on a wider scale (eg for nature, for your community) as well as a narrower perspective - self gratitude.
Why practise gratitude?
Before getting into the details, I think most people would agree that it feels good to be grateful. When you genuinely feel deeply thankful, you can feel uplifted, happy, joyful or just nice and warm inside. Expressing gratitude to someone else gives you an extra boost as you see them feeling good receiving the appreciation. This alone might be enough for you to express gratitude regularly, but from a wider perspective, it also has the potential to improve your overall mental, emotional and physical, and spiritual wellness.
What happens in our brain when we experience gratitude?
When we experience gratitude, we activate the parts of our brains that regulate memory, emotions and bodily functions, including sleep. This means that feeling thankful can improve our sleep and can regulate the production of cortisol, the stress hormone, leading to reduced levels of stress and anxiety. In addition, when we express or receive gratitude, the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin are released, which boosts our mood and makes us feel happy.
Our brains have the ability to change and reorganise structure and pathways over time (neuroplasticity), and research has suggested that this can be brought about by building a habit of gratitude. With regular practice, we strengthen the neural pathways related to gratitude - over time, we can rewire our brains to feel more gratitude, more easily. This change can lower the impact of negative emotions, helping us to reduce our stress and to build emotional resilience.
What are the specific benefits?
From what I’ve read, I’ve collated the potential benefits of a habit of gratitude and listed them below.
Physical benefits:
Lower heart rate
Reduced pain
Strengthened immune system
Higher quality sleep
Cognitive benefits:
Improved focus
More patience
Improved productivity
Social benefits:
Strengthened relationships with others
Feeling of connection to our community
Emotional benefits:
Lower stress and anxiety
Reduced depression
More optimistic outlook
More self motivation
Magnified positive emotions
Increased resilience to negative emotions
Greater ability to deal with and recover from adversity
Higher sense of self worth
Spiritual benefits:
Increased sense of connectedness to others, ourselves, nature, a higher power
Focus on our values, leading to increased engagement in behaviours that cultivate these values
How should we practise gratitude?
To reap the rewards, we need to put in some work - building a practice of gratitude involves purposeful and persistent effort over time. The more we practise, the more easily we will notice things to be grateful for and the more we will find ourselves in an optimistic, resilient mental state.
Practising gratitude comes down to two steps: noticing something to feel grateful for, and then acting on it. There are so many different ways to do this, but I’ve put together some ideas here to get you started.
To develop a habit of noticing things to be thankful for, you could try:
Incorporating gratitude into your morning and/or evening routine - adding this to a daily routine you already follow will help you remember to do it
Viewing good things in your life as gifts
Adding gratitude to your journalling practice (if you journal regularly)
Making space for mindful moments during your day - slowing down and using your senses will help you notice the good
Meditating or praying on ideas of gratitude (whichever works for you)
Not doing it alone - it’s often helpful to commit to a new habit with someone else so that you can hold each other accountable
Using a gratitude app and allowing reminders - there are lots of gratitude apps that remind you to log 3 things a day (eg https://gratefulness.me/). I recently found a free app called ‘Appreciation jar’ (https://appreciation.place/), where you join with someone else and you can both share what you are thankful for about the other person
You could express or act on your feelings of gratitude by:
Thanking someone mentally
Writing a thank you note/letter to someone else
Starting an appreciation jar - adding notes of what you’re grateful for each day for a month/ quarter/ year and then reviewing what you’ve written
Carrying out an act of kindness
Volunteering
Showing yourself gratitude with planned time for self care
Sharing gratitude directly with others:
Verbally or in writing
Physical affection eg a hug to show appreciation (where appropriate!)
Giving a gift
Spending quality time together
Sharing gratitude on social media
Keeping a gratitude journal - aim to write two to three times a week for 15-20 minutes, focusing on one thing at a time, being as specific as possible and going into depth
What are the challenges?
When you’re starting out, practising gratitude can feel a little unnatural or uncomfortable. You may find it difficult to think of anything to be grateful for, especially if you’ve had a bad day! It can be helpful to narrow things down to your senses - you can ask yourself ‘what can I see/ hear/ smell/ touch right now that I’m grateful for?’ Once you think of a couple of things, it usually spirals and you think of more and more that you can feel grateful for.
Although practising gratitude can feel a little unnatural when you’re starting out, this is normal, and it is important to distinguish it from toxic positivity. The aim of gratitude practice is to be mindful and develop your ability to notice the little things and small wins which may otherwise go unnoticed. Trying to force yourself to be positive all the time and to ignore or minimise negative emotions or suffering is not helpful. Comments such as ‘you should be grateful’ or ‘things could be worse’ can cause feelings of guilt or shame and can be invalidating and harmful. Although there is little benefit of dwelling on the negative, it is important to acknowledge the bad as well as the good, as this develops our resilience and our ability to fully appreciate the good.
Another potential challenge is that practising gratitude for the little things can go against our need to feel in control. To fully embrace thankful living, you need to let go and accept life as it is to an extent. This is something I am finding particularly challenging at the moment! I know, logically, that good things can happen to bad people and bad things can happen to good people, but it’s difficult to accept that and just go with it.
My take
I’m going to try this by committing to keeping a gratitude journal. I have used journals before now which have prompted gratitude, but I haven’t stuck with anything yet. Reading up for writing this has taught me a lot about the benefits of practising gratitude regularly - the fact that it can lead to changes in the brain has convinced me to give it a proper go. I’m going to write three times a week for at least four weeks, and then will reflect on any changes I experience - hopefully I’ll be transformed!
My husband and I are giving the ‘Appreciation Jar’ app (I mentioned earlier - https://appreciation.place) a go at the moment - it is going surprisingly well! We have kept up with it for four weeks so far, only going 2-3 days at most without adding something we are grateful for. It feels good to express and receive appreciation, and having the app at our fingertips means we communicate things we appreciate about the other as we think of them, rather than potentially forgetting them as the day goes on. It’s started some positive conversations we might not have otherwise had, and it also seems to have helped us let go of disagreements more easily so far (fingers crossed it continues!).
Summary
Developing a regular gratitude practice enhances mindfulness and helps keep you grounded in the present
Appreciating what you have rather than focusing on what you want in the future can promote satisfaction and contentment, boosting your overall happiness and having positive effects on your overall wellness
The more you acknowledge and feel thankful for things during your day, the easier it becomes to stay mindful and to notice and relish good experiences
Acknowledging the bad as well as the good brings balance and promotes our ability to appreciate the good times all the more
Expressing gratitude to others boosts their happiness too
If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you’d like to share your experience of or thoughts on gratitude - I’d be really interested.
References
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