Gratitude is Powerful
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I would be remiss to not write a little about how truly powerful gratitude is. A lot of positive psychology is built around this super skill. Martin Seligman, in many ways the father of positive psych, championed gratitude’s ability to not only help those who are struggling but also as a way to bring healthy people toward thriving. My emotional intelligence professor also taught us that our brains cannot hold fear and gratitude at the same time. This means that gratitude is a skill that can help us in both acute stressful moments and in terms of long-term overall wellbeing.
From my own experience, I love that gratitude helps me simultaneously incorporate mindfulness and hope. When I’m practicing gratitude, I’m actively appreciating things in my present day and then I can also think of ways to find more of those good things in the future. It’s a powerful mind frame that keeps us open to possibility while staying rooted in the present.
If you’re looking to up your gratitude game this week as you prepare for Thanksgiving, I have 3 gratitude practices that I’ve adapted from positive psychology that I’d love to share with you. You can get a link to the handouts of these exercises for free here.
Each of the exercises has two parts. First, doing the actual exercise and then reflecting on that action. I recommend not missing the reflection part as that’s where all the good stuff really happens. (i.e. it engages that System II thinking!)
The first option is the classic “3 good things” exercise. Each night, at the end of the day, list 3 good things that happened during that day. Also, think through some questions as to why those 3 good things happened and what you could do to have more moments like that. I recommend writing your thoughts each night because at the end of the week, it is really powerful to be able to look back and see a summary of your thoughts.
I’ve been doing an adaptation of this exercise with my family each night and I’m surprised by how much my children (ages 14, 10, and 6) love doing it. If I try to rush them to bed without doing our nightly ritual, my 6-year-old shouts, “Wait! We didn’t do our gratefuls!” Not only does it help my children turn toward the positive in their world, but I get insights into the things that matter to them. For instance, once there was a day where I was full of mom guilt because I didn’t believe I had done enough right that day. My son surprised me by saying, “It was the best day ever! We had grilled cheese sandwiches!” I had no idea how much I needed to hear about the little things that matter to my son that day.
The other exercises are writing a gratitude letter and mindful photography. I’ll let you look at the instructions for each on their own. These science-backed exercises show the power of incorporating gratitude in your everyday life. More than the science though, I challenge you to see if they bring you a little something extra this year. I know that I plan to scale up our gratitude reflections this week with my family. If I’m going to spend all this time prepping the meal, I’d like to make sure I’ve prepped our hearts just as well.
Thanks for reading with me today. I’m grateful for you. I hope that you open your heart to even more gratitude this week.