It’s Thanksgiving, so it’s naturally a time of year when we think about gratitude and being thankful for what we have. We love to make an extra effort this time of year to give thanks for what we have, but many of us don’t carry that practice of gratitude throughout the year. This year, take some time to think about how an intentional gratitude practice can benefit your mood throughout the year. This is the perfect time to kick off an intentional gratitude practice to boost your mood throughout the holidays and into the new year as well.
Some people struggle with negative thought cycles that keeps their mind occupied with the things they wish they had, or the things they wish they didn’t have, or the problems they may be facing that seem overwhelming. We all struggle with these negative thoughts at times, but when negative thoughts take up the majority of your mental energy each day, it can lead to depression, anxiety, fatigue, and hopelessness.
What Are the Benefits of a Gratitude Practice?
Gratitude is an appreciation of what is valuable to you. Gratitude also benefits your mental health in very tangible ways, and research supports the benefits of this practice. Gratitude reduces negative thoughts, increases life satisfaction, and boosts self-esteem. Practicing intentional gratitude can also reduce negative rumination, improve overall well-being, and is a form of self-care.
Incorporating a gratitude practice has been shown to benefit people who have PTSD, those will serious health conditions, and in general has resulted in positive impacts for participants across the past two decades of research. Researchers have shown that an intentional gratitude practice actually trains your brain to be more altruistic, making people more likely to give to charitable causes. This research suggests that practicing gratitude can have an actual impact on our brain’s inner circuitry. As with all habits, consistency can wire your brain for change, bad or good. There is even some preliminary research that suggests that gratitude journaling could reduce inflammation in the body, which is a common source of many negative health conditions.
How To Start A Gratitude Practice
There are many ways that you can start to implement intentional gratitude into your daily life. Everyone can benefit from starting an intentional gratitude practice, but if you struggle with negative thoughts cycles, depression, anger, past trauma, or low frustration tolerance, you especially may want to start a gratitude practice to combat some of the mental impacts of these problems. Here are some options for how to do this:
You can simply keep a daily list where you jot down one thing that you a grateful for every day, or you can journal a little more thoroughly and really process why you feel appreciative of the people, places, and things in your life. You can challenge yourself to do this daily for a certain period of time, such as 30 or 100 days, and then try to keep it going as a daily reminder to live in gratitude. You can include anything in the world that you feel grateful for: friends, family, a job, your pets, lessons learned, a kind word you received, your home, your neighbors, food to eat, opportunities to grow, et cetera. When you start to recognize how much you have to be grateful for, you will begin to live with that appreciation in your heart.
- Do a mental affirmation each morning or each evening before bed
Start each day with a mental affirmation like “I’m grateful to be alive today and I’m committing to living today with that gratitude in my heart”, or you could end your day with a similar affirmation, such as “I’m grateful that I was able to make a difference today in my (job, family, community, et cetera)”.
- Think of specific traits of the people you care about that you appreciate, and then tell those people how grateful you are for the positive things they bring to your life
Note the very specific things that you appreciate about the people in your life and what those qualities bring to your life. This could be things such as “My best friend is super fun to hang around and she always cheers me up”, or “My partner is really patient, even when I’m feeling overwhelmed and frustrated”, or “My children are so funny and interesting, even when they challenge me”.
- Make a list of all the things you DON’T want that you DON’T have
This list could go on forever, really, but sometimes it’s helpful to think about all the things that you do not have to live with that others unfortunately do. There is nothing wrong with feeling gratitude that you have escaped some hardships that others have had to endure. These could be things such as “I do not live in a war zone, I do not have a terminal illness, my life is not made harder due to a disability”. Of course some people do have to live with these circumstances, and so if you are lucky enough to be one of those that do not, then gratitude is in order for the ways in which you benefit from not having to struggle with those issues.
Cultivating gratitude is something that can improve your overall quality of life and boost your mood when you feel stuck in a cycle of negativity. Gratitude is not about wearing rose-colored glasses and pretending you don’t have any problems. Nor does it mean that you don’t still need to do the work to change the things about yourself or your life that you find unsatisfying. Gratitude is about recognizing everything that you DO have. It is about looking at your life from a strengths perspective, and noticing everything that you have going in your favor instead of worrying about everything that you have working against you.
If you want to start a gratitude practice and start living a more mindful life, you can start with a small challenge to incorporate gratitude into your daily routine. I’ll send you a free 30-day Mindfulness Journal that includes space to journal your gratitude daily, along with daily inspiration, places to track your habits, and journal about your progress. Get started today to incorporate the benefits of gratitude in your life!
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