WHY BOTHER PRACTICING GRATEFULNESS
We are all familiar with feeling dissatisfied with our lives, feeling like we are not successful enough, that your relationships are not what you would like them to be, that you aren’t able to afford the things you want. Feeling disappointed with yourself for not living up to the expectations that you (or others) have set for yourself. You look at other people and how they are living their lives and think “How did they get so lucky?”, or “I wish my life was as great as theirs”. You may feel guilty for feeling so envious but it can be hard to stop feeling that way, especially with social media constantly reminding you that aiming for anything less then complete and total happiness means that you are failure or even worse, as loser.
What do we do with these feelings of satisfaction? How do we rid ourselves of these feeling of inferiority? The research in the field of positive psychology points to one concept that can be incredibly powerful in combating the feeling of disillusionment. This concept is one of the strongest predictors of how happy people are, how easily they make friends, and how good they are with dealing with hardship. What is this curious concept? Gratitude.
While gratitude may sound like another airy-fairy, self-improvement “hack”, it actually has a rich backing of research that shows the effectiveness of gratitude and gratitude practices in improving mental health. Believe it or not gratefulness has played a key role in human evolution and connect us to each other. You can even see it in nature. Animals show gratefulness and reciprocity as it helps them survive. When our brain recognizes that someone has done something nice for us we experience gratitude and that enhances our motivation to do something nice for them as a way to repay them. This makes you care about others and others care about out. This was important as our brains developed because as we evolved to better understand emotions, we could recognize selfish individuals and they were left out of the group because, they wouldn’t help out! Being able to experience gratitude was an evolutionary advantage that helped us to build and maintain connections and develop as a species.
Research has also shown that gratitude stimulates pathways in our brain involved in feelings of reward, forming social bonds, and interpreting others intention, and makes it easier to interpret and save positive memories. Gratitude has also shown to counteract negative emotions and habits like envy, narcissism, and social comparison. As a consequence people who practice gratitude tend to be overall happier, no matter what it is they are grateful for. They also tend to feel more satisfied with their life and have strong social connections and relationships. Additionally they suffer less from depression, burnout, and demonstrate greater resiliency when dealing with traumatic events. Gratitude makes it less likely to fall into many of the traps that come with living in modern society.
So how do we practice gratitude. It’s simple really, keeping a gratitude journal where your write down 3-5 things you are grateful for in the day can be wonderful way to start. You can feel grateful for a multitude of things, someone doing something kind for you, random events like the weather, or even for being outside in nature. You can feel grateful for a little thing, like how great coffee is, or that someone was kind to you. You can reflect on what things or which people you would miss if they were gone, and be grateful that they are in your life? It’s mind-blowing really that something as simply as a little self-reflection can have such a wide impact one your overall mental health. This being said there are a few caveats that I want to add. This is not a substitution for therapy and it doesn’t mean that just practicing gratefulness alone is a “cure” for depression and/or anxiety. It’s just one piece of the puzzle. It can also be detrimental to your mental health if you put pressure on yourself to be “happy” all the time. Remember gratefulness does not mean having to be happy all the time. It is important to give space to and acknowledge your negative emotions as well. So with all that being said why don’t you give it a try. Being a human is hard, but it doesn’t need to be as hard, and if you actively look you might see that your life is much better then you thought!
