Gratitude is a very simple practice to enhance your happiness, boost your physical health, improve relationships, and even help you to navigate life’s toughest challenges.
Gratitude is a powerful emotion and a transformative habit. It’s more than just saying ‘thank you.’ It’s about acknowledging the goodness in our lives and recognizing that the source of this goodness often comes from outside of ourselves. It’s a celebration of the positive aspects of life, both big and small, that we often take for granted.
Trials and suffering can refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Well, when times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you begin to see that everything you have, everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take it for granted. So, crisis can make us more grateful—but research says gratitude also helps us cope with crisis. Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall.
It works this way: Think of the worst times in your life, your sorrows, your losses, your sadness—and then remember that here you are, able to remember them, that you made it through the worst times of your life, you got through the trauma, you got through the trial, you endured the temptation, you survived the bad relationship, you’re making your way out of the dark. Remember the bad things, then look to see where you are now.
This process of remembering how difficult life used to be and how far we have come sets up an explicit contrast that is fertile ground for gratefulness. Our minds think in terms of counterfactuals—mental comparisons we make between the way things are and how things might have been different. Contrasting the present with negative times in the past can make us feel happier (or at least less unhappy) and enhance our overall sense of well-being. This opens the door to coping gratefully.
A Perspective Shift
Practicing gratitude encourages us to shift our perspective from scarcity to abundance. It nudges us away from focusing on what we lack or what we want, directing our attention instead to the blessings we already have. This shift in perspective can significantly enhance our overall well-being and life satisfaction.
An Act of Mindfulness
Gratitude is intrinsically linked with mindfulness – the practice of being present and fully engaged with whatever we’re doing now. It’s about being aware of and thankful for the present moment, the here and now. This act of mindful appreciation can significantly enhance our mental and emotional well-being.
