Gratitude

Gratitude is less a personality trait than a practice and habit. We tend to think of people we come across who seem especially grateful as just naturally that way. Nope. It’s what they choose. 

I know you’ve heard all about the remarkable health benefits derived from gratitude. 

So, I won’t waste any time expounding on that today. 

Like your muscles, gratitude gets stronger, more durable, and more useful the more you use it. And like your muscles, it atrophies when you don’t. 

Paradoxically, intentional gratitude is most useful during your darkest seasons. Heck, it’s easy to feel grateful when things are going your way, less so when the world seems to be crumbling around you.

Practical tip - take time at the beginning and end of each day for quiet gratitude moments. 

Morning - Before you launch into your day, sit quietly for a couple of minutes, and consider the people in your life for whom you feel, or should feel, grateful. This could range from somebody really important to you, like a parent, spouse, or child. Or it could be someone you don’t even know who held a door open for you. 

OK, that’s Step One. Step Two is to reach out to that person and express your gratitude. If it was the aforementioned stranger who held the door, make a decision that you’ll do the same the next chance you get. 

Evening - Before you shut down for the night, list what went well that day and who played a part in that. Seriously, make a list. I do this every night, and it’s astonishing how long the list grows sometimes. Then sit with that for a few minutes and let the gratitude bubble up. Now, to reinforce the depth of your gratitude, consider how you’d feel if those things hadn’t gone well, or worse, things had gone rather poorly. 

Nothing sharpens our gratitude more than witnessing and feeling the misfortune of someone we love or care about. There is ALWAYS somebody who has it much worse off than you.  

OK, that’s Step One. As with the morning ritual, Step Two is to reach out to those people and let them know that you appreciate them and why you do. 

Like kindness and empathy, miraculously, the more intentional and habitual you are in practicing gratitude, the more it rebounds back to you.