Gratitude for a well mind
Here’s some perspective, if you have enough to eat and a place to live, everything else is chocolate sauce! An income of $32,400 per year would place you among the top 1% of income earners in the world.
It is entrenched in all major religions and is a philosophy that has been taught for years. Be thankful each day.
You have probably heard this many times, and that’s because it works. Gratitude is magic, and if we all practised gratitude the world would be different.
Here’s some perspective, if you have enough to eat and a place to live, everything else is chocolate sauce! An income of $32,400 per year would place you among the top 1% of income earners in the world. Disease, poverty, famine, and war, claim thousands of lives, and yet here we are alive, with food on our plate and clean drinking water. There are so many things to be grateful for, and research supports the theory that gratitude will encourage a well mind; those who practice gratitude report greater wellbeing and have a more positive mood.
A recent study involved participants writing a few sentences each week, focusing on specific topics. One group wrote about things they were grateful for, which had occurred during the week. The other group wrote about daily irritations or things that had upset them, and the third wrote about the events that had affected them (control group). After 10 weeks, those who listed what they were grateful for were more optimistic and felt better about their lives. And, they also exercised more frequently, and had fewer visits to the doctor than those who focused on sources of irritation. There are many such studies that show that just simply being thankful for the small things can have huge positive effects on the wellbeing of our mind.
Every morning I ask my step-children to give me two things that they are grateful for, and I do the same. Some mornings we get a bit stuck, but that is usually because we are trying not to be repetitive, or we want to come up with a doozy (the ego is always there – even in gratitude).
There is also evidence that taking another approach; mental subtraction works wonders. Mental subtraction is when you imagine what life would be like if the positive event hadn’t happened. For example you are grateful that you work close to where you live so that you don’t have a tedious commute daily. Imagine if that wasn’t the case and you worked 90 mins from home. Mental subtraction helps us to bathe in gratitude as we imagine how difficult life could be without the comforts that we have.
Gratitude, like everything, is something to practice and grow. And it will change your mind.
Gratitude practices
Keep a gratitude journal and try to write five things each week for which you are grateful. Be specific and include why you are grateful.
Write thank you notes to those who have impacted your life in some way
Identify three things that you are grateful for about yourself. It may be as simple as ‘I’m so grateful that my legs get me from place to place’, or ‘I’m grateful that I can remember important events’
Imagine if you didn’t have something that you value in your life in your life
Wake up each day and give thanks that you are living and breathing
C.N Armenta, M.M Fritz., S Lyubomirsk. (2017). Functions of Positive Emotions: Gratitude as a Motivator of Self-Improvement and Positive Change. Emotion Review, 9(3), 183–190 https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073916669596
M.E McCullough, R.A Emmons, J.A Tsang (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 112–127. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.82.1.112
J.J Froh. T.B Kashdan, K.M Ozimkowski et al. (2009). Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention in children and adolescents? Examining positive affect as a moderator. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(5), 408–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760902992464
P.L Hill, M Allemand (2011). Gratitude, forgivingness, and well-being in adulthood: Tests of moderation and incremental prediction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(5), 397–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2011 .602099
M Koo, S.B Algoe,T.D Wilson et al.(2008). It’s a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people’s affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1217–1224. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013316