Gratitude for you, Gratitude for me.

Jan 17

Gratitude. A word that elicits thoughts of thanking someone for something they’ve done. It’s typically a positive experience to say, “thank you” to another person for helping us with something or doing something kind and it’s a practice that was encouraged in most of us from the time we were children. But, what if we practiced being kind to ourselves also and practiced gratitude in our own lives? What if we spent some time being grateful for the good things we experience every day, but have a tendency to overlook?

It's easy to walk through our day being hyper-aware of all the things that are going wrong. I overslept. I got caught in traffic. I spilled coffee on myself. I have so much work to do. I’m running late. We seem to have an innate ability to easily identify the stressors and challenges of our day-to-day lives. But what about the good things? The things that are going right? I don’t mean big, life-altering things – after all, those don’t happen every single day. While we’re busy focusing on what’s not working well, we tend to gloss over the small things that are going right. Identifying gratitudes isn’t necessarily focusing only on the positive, good things in our lives. After all, we can’t deny that we have stress because that’s not helpful either. The practice of gratitudes largely involves incorporating it throughout our day until over time, it becomes almost like a second nature. If we take the time, we can typically find something good about our day to be thankful for.

According to a UCLA Health article, regularly practicing gratitudes for 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week can have significant benefits to our physical and emotional health and our lives in general. These benefits can include –

o Stress relief

When we’re faced with significant stressors, our nervous system becomes activated. However, taking some time to be thankful can prompt physiological changes in our bodies that instead activate the parasympathetic nervous system (the part of our nervous system that helps us to be at rest). In practicing gratitudes we can improve our breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure, which leads to us being in a more relaxed state

o Anxiety

Because the experience of anxiety typically involves worrying about the future, gratitudes can be particularly helpful in grounding us to the present. This can be done by shifting our focus from the future by finding things in your life that you’re grateful for right here, right now.

o Depression

People who are experiencing depression and also practice gratitudes seem to have improved symptoms of depression over time. They tend to report better satisfaction with social relationships, life, and improved self-esteem

o Heart health

According to research, keeping a gratitude journal (I’ll tell you more about this below) can help significantly decrease diastolic blood pressure. Because gratitudes can also help with depressed mood, and because depression can be a contributing factor to heart disease, studies have shown that use of gratitudes also helps reduce the risk of heart disease

o Improved sleep

Sleep can be a fickle thing for some folks. While some of us have no trouble dozing off and sleeping through the night, many people do. Our sleep can be easily affected by things like anxiety, depression, and stress. But, now that we know that gratitude can help improve each of these with regular practice, we also know that our sleep can be improved by this too.

So, how do we practice gratitudes?

There are many different ways to begin the practice of gratitude. I’ll cover a few of them here –

o Gratitude journal

Spend a few minutes each day or night writing down a few things that you’re grateful for from the day. It could be as simple as having had a good night’s rest or having beautiful weather or as big as getting a promotion at work. Meet yourself where you are that day

o Share your gratitude with others

Expressing gratitude to others can help to strengthen our relationships with them. The next time someone does something kind for you, be sure to let them know

o Use your senses

The 5 senses that is. Try going for a walk and using your sense of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste to become aware of your surroundings. It could be the warmth of the sun on your skin or the sight of birds in flight. The feeling of grass on our fingertips. Be present and use your senses to soak up the experience.

o Gratitude meditation

Spend some time practicing a gratitude meditation wherein you can slowly shift your attention from breathwork to the things you’re feeling grateful for

o Gratitude jar

Each day, write down at least one thing you’re feeling grateful for on a small piece of paper, fold it up, and place it in a jar. On days where life feels a little tougher (or maybe you just need a gentle reminder), open up your jar and read through the things that have brought your gratitude recently.

The practice of gratitude is one that takes, well, practice. The more often we do it, the easier it gets to identify things that bring us joy and to shift our perspective over to thoughts that are likely healthier and more helpful than the ones we currently have going on. If you think you’d benefit from some more mindfulness tips and are ready to talk, feel free to reach out by calling or texting (314) 668-2623. You can also head over to the Contact Page and submit a contact form.

Take good care and thanks for reading.

And as always, be kind to yourself.

Sincerely,