How practicing gratitude can change you for the better: Gratitude's effects on Well-being
Practicing gratitude has been around since ancient times and is a major aspect to all religions. Yet, for some reason, most of us experience difficulties with expressing and practicing gratitude in our normal lives. Most of us wait until holidays roll around to reflect on our lives and express gratitude for others. So, what happens the rest of the year? Why is it that we seem to only express our gratefulness when there is an expectation to do so? And what if we start practicing gratitude on our own, weekly or daily — will that affect us positively in the long run?
Something I’ve noticed throughout my life, and especially while working as a therapist, we all tend to focus on the negative things in our lives. We focus on what is going wrong, what we don’t have, and work on finding who or what to blame for these things. By focusing on the negative, we begin to take the positive things/people in our lives for granted and causes us to feel more negative emotions than positive. With this in mind, it shouldn’t come to much of a surprise to find out that through expressing regular gratitude for our lives, we experience an increase in our overall well-being.
Why is practicing gratitude so hard?
All advice is always easier said than done. And even something as “simple” as practicing gratitude is much more difficult than expected. Why is that? Why is it that we focus so much on the negative that we lose touch with what we are grateful for?
When it comes to expressing how grateful we are for the people in our lives, we simply fall into the trap of thinking “well, of course they know I’m grateful for them.” While we hope this is true, it often is not as obvious as we hope it would be. As I mentioned in my last post, even in our relationships we can hyper-focus on the things going wrong, creating drama and causing tension. This can make it difficult for those people in our lives to feel how thankful we are for them, how grateful we feel for them being in our lives. Sometimes it isn’t enough to show your gratitude for others through acts of service or the way you treat them, it is equally important to verbalise her gratitude and thanks.
We’re also just egocentric by nature. This means that we focus on how things affect us, how we need to make ourselves feel better. And by focusing on ourselves so much, we tend to focus on how thing will negatively affect us and forget the positives. Think of it as almost positive amnesia — we tend to forget or put less emphasis on the positives and pay more attention to the negatives. In order to ourselves from negative experiences, we tend to believe other people will not have a positive impact on us and that we must protect ourselves. Thus limiting the amount of positive interactions with other people.
Finally, we’re generally scared to express our emotions. We become fearful of how others will react to our emotions if we were to express them to others. Yes, we even fear expressing gratitude to others in fear of how it will make us look. It is often difficult for us to find the right words to successfully express our gratitude and thanks, making us feel incredibly uncomfortable with doing so. And because we feel uncomfortable with it, we assume other people will feel just as uncomfortable. This discomfort with our emotions and fear of how it will be interpreted often prevents us from speaking about our emotions altogether.
If it’s so difficult, then how do we do it?
When it comes to expressing how grateful we are for other people, we really should be verbally expressing it. But, when it comes to other things we are grateful for, we can practice gratitude on our own. You can practice gratitude through self-reflection, such as meditation or journaling. This allows you the necessary, judgment-free space to practice gratitude on your own, and prepare for expressing this to others verbally.
So, how exactly does this affect your well-being?
Gratitude has been linked to higher levels of happiness, reduced depression and stress, enhanced empathy, improvements of self-esteem, and help increase resiliency, just to name a few. Now, if this isn’t something to be grateful for, I don’t know what is!
By recognising and expressing gratitude, your overall well-being increases. You’ll better prepared for when negative events happen and you are more likely to bounce back quicker (resiliency). You’ll find it easier to forgive yourself for mistakes and appreciate all that you have, even when things are difficult.
But not only does gratitude help you internally, it can help your relationship with others! It can even help you create new relationships. It helps you see the good in people instead of being concerned with negative interactions. Speaking of forgiveness, you’ll find yourself forgiving others easily, again boosting your relationships.
There’s also science that points to major health benefits of gratitude. With so many benefits, how could you resist?
During sessions, I will always try to focus on at least one positive thing from the week with a client, even if it is something as “small” as taking a shower and making it into the office. It’s so important for your mental well-being, and even physical health, to take some time to focus on the good and step away from the bad. Through practicing this with clients, I find their attitude during session changes, and even how they interpret situations outside of therapy changes on their own. I’ve seen the power of positivity and gratitude work first hand.
Gratitude is something I think we all need to practice more of. More than just when we’re celebrating holidays with family, more than picking out a heartfelt card for you a loved one on their birthday. It is something we all need to be actively doing on a regular basis, even if it is only to yourself.
Challenge yourself for the next week to focus on the positives, practicing gratitude internally, and express your gratefulness for someone you love. Take note of how it makes you feel. If you notice these positive effects, maybe it’ll become a habit.
