The Life-Changing Attitude of Gratitude
‘Tis the season of joy, family, giving, and gratitude but sometimes the holiday season can also bring with it sadness, anxiety, depression, and grief. Thankfully, the good news is that the very thing that can help us navigate those uncomfortable emotions happens to be built right into the season: gratitude.
I started my own personal development journey with gratitude FIRST, establishing the habit of writing down five simple bullet points of gratitude each morning. This simple practice, which I have now been implementing for three years strong, has quite literally changed my life.
In this episode, we’ll chat about:
Ways gratitude benefits your social, psychological, and physical well-being
How gratitude changes your brain
Five ideas for incorporating gratitude into your daily life
In my opinion, gratitude might be the most simple yet wildly powerful practice out there for our physical, social, and mental well-being. Unfortunately, it often takes a tragedy or losing something to realize how grateful we were to have it, whether it be a home, a job, food in the fridge, or a relationship.
It’s easy to get caught up in the desire to want more, do more, and reach for more. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely believe in dreaming big and setting big audacious goals, but when we are constantly focused on what we are reaching for and thus lacking, it can become toxic. It doesn’t leave room and space for us to feel happy, proud, and content right here in the moment.
For me, gratitude is what grounds me, the thing that brings me back to the present and helps me find understanding and peace with the past.
BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE
According to psychologists, gratitude is a positive emotional response that we perceive on giving or receiving a benefit from someone. It can be written, spoken, or simply thought.
I’ve found that the more I practice gratitude, the more I notice things in my life to be grateful for. It creates abundance. Oprah Winfrey said it best, “Be thankful for what you have, you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never have enough.”
At the end of the day, gratitude all comes back to our thinking and our perception.
When it comes to gratitude, the benefits are seemingly endless. Not only does it benefit our mental and emotional well-being, but it even benefits our social and physical health as well. Let’s break it down a bit.
SOCIAL BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE
Gratitude, when shared, helps us strengthen relationships and connections with people. It is a deliberate recognition of the generosity of others. When we openly thank others, it reinforces that generosity and they in turn are more likely to continue being generous.
Not only that, but it can improve our communication, increase our empathy for others, and it just makes us just plain easier to like! Grateful people are much more pleasant to be around than ungrateful people. These benefits ultimately create stronger interpersonal relationships leading to increased productivity at work and home, better team dynamics, and stronger leadership skills.
PSYCHOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE
In my personal experience, gratitudes greatest effect was on my mental and emotional well being. It has the power to help us shift away from our negative thinking and emotions. Things grow where energy flows. If all of our mental energy is being poured into limiting beliefs and negative thoughts, guess what? That negativity flourishes. But if we root ourselves in intentional gratitude, guess what? We find more things to be grateful for and the increase in gratitude leaves less space for negativity.
Even more remarkable is how gratitude literally changes our brain! Research shows that it wires and fires new neural connections to the bliss center, it fosters cognitive restructuring by evoking positive thinking, and it reduces fear and anxiety by regulating stress hormones.
Some people even consider gratitude to be a natural antidepressant. Intentional gratitude has the power to produce feelings of long-lasting happiness and contentment which occurs at the neurotransmitter level. When we express and receive gratitude, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the neurotransmitters responsible for happiness. That means it has the power to immediately enhance our mood and make us feel happy from the inside out.
While gratitude can benefit us immediately, the more we consciously practice it every day, those neural pathways strengthen to help create a more permanent grateful and positive nature with ourselves.
Gratitude can reduce anxiety and depression by creating more emotional awareness. Intentionally practicing it also engages the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that manages negative emotions like guilt, shame, and violence. Gratitude creates a more empathetic and positive mindset by nature. Not only that, but gratitude has been shown to help reduce levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can help reduce feelings of fear and anxiety as well.
PHYSICAL BENEFITS OF GRATITUDE
Not only does gratitude benefit our social and psychological health, but the benefits also manifest themselves in our physical health as well. Research shows that gratitude can strengthen our immune system and regulate dopamine levels to reduce the feelings of pain. When we have fewer body pains and aches, we are much more likely to care for our bodies well and work out.
Gratitude has also been shown to benefit our cardiac health. A grateful heart is a healthy heart.
Not only that, but it can improve our sleep which in turn impacts all aspects of our physical health.
I have found that when we are more grateful for our physical bodies, we are much more likely to treat it with kindness and care instead of abusing it or taking it for granted. Gratitude helped me completely rethink my relationship with my body and in turn helped me completely change my habits and my life.
GRATITUDE IN ACTION
I truly believe that the key to a happier, healthy life starts with a grateful heart and mind. It creates an abundance mindset and improves our physical, psychological, and social well-being.
So how do we create more gratitude intentionally? Here are five ideas for how you can start implementing more gratitude into your daily life.
Start with yourself. When you look in the mirror each morning, share five things you're grateful for about yourself.
Keep a gratitude journal. Even if it’s writing down five bullet points, practice gratitude in writing each day and challenge yourself to make your bits of gratitude to be as specific as possible.
Meditation. Mindful gratitude helps you be present without judgement. Not sure how to meditate? Check out apps like Calm or Headspace or explore one of the thousands of guided meditations on YouTube for free.
Prayer. Spiritual gratitude helps you tune into whatever higher power you believe in.
Share it. Don’t keep it to yourself, but give it to the world! Write a letter to someone you’re grateful for, do a gratitude visit, or schedule a coffee date to tell them in person.
Interested in starting a journal practice but not sure where to start? My friend Jess is sharing with my listeners a one month free trial to Bright Pages, an online guided journaling platform that makes journaling light, easy, and accessible. Visit BrightPages.com and use code CLIMB to get started for free!
IMPORTANT NOTE:
For gratitude to have the most profound impact, it should be practiced with consistency. Writing down five bullet points of gratitude for one day isn’t going to drastically impact your health, but doing it daily with consistency absolutely can!
G.K. Chesterson once shared an agricultural metaphor that I love comparing the pursuit of happiness to cultivation. We don’t get the desired result unless we nourish and nurture the seeds properly.
So, my challenge for you friend is to choose 1 gratitude in action method to start practicing as a DAILY habit. Then, report back to me after a month or two and let me know how it’s impacting your life for the better! I think you may be surprised just how powerful having an attitude of gratitude can truly be.