Incorporate Gratitude into Your Daily Life

Written by Tammy Battle, RN, State Nursing Director at Boundless

Do you remember learning to say, “thank you” or teaching a child to say, “thank you”? We teach these two words early in the toddlers’ developmental years. Teaching a child to be thankful and express gratitude will help them nourish and maintain important relationships later in adulthood. Most of us know that it is important to express thanks to people who help us or acknowledge things we are grateful for in life. We generally express thanks as an act of courtesy or habitual response, without recognizing how we are feeling at the time. When we say thank you we should take a moment to reflect on it.

How to practice gratitude

• Keep a Gratitude Journal. Establish a daily practice in which you remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy. Recalling moments of gratitude associated with ordinary events, your personal attributes, or valued people in your life gives you the potential to interweave a sustainable theme of gratefulness into your life.
• Ask Yourself Three Questions. Meditate on your relationships with parents, friends, siblings, work associates, children, and partners using these three questions: “What have I received from __?”, “What have I given to __?”, and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?”
• Share Your Gratitude with Others. Research has found that expressing gratitude can strengthen relationships. So, the next time your partner, friend or family member does something you appreciate, be sure to let them know.
• Come to Your Senses. Through our senses-the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear-we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a miraculous construction, but also a gift.
• Go Through the Motions. Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude. By “going through grateful motions,” you will trigger the emotion of gratitude more often.
• Make a Vow to Practice Gratitude- write your own gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count my blessings each day,” and post it somewhere where you will be reminded of it daily.

Taking a moment to be thankful for the good things in life can help you cultivate a healthy work life, manage stress, and develop a deeper connection to people, especially in tough situations.

What are the effects of practicing gratitude?

• It boosts your mental health. Practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time.
• It helps you accept change. When we are comfortable with the way things already are, it can be difficult to accept when things change—let alone feel grateful for that difference. But when we make it a habit to notice the good change brings, we can become more flexible and accepting.
• It can relieve stress. The regions of the brain associated with gratitude connect to the area where we experience pleasure. These regions are also heavily connected to the parts of the brain that control basic emotion regulation and heart rate and are associated with stress relief and thus pain reduction. Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows the subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us.

One of the most powerful ways to rewire your brain for more joy and less stress is to focus on gratitude. People who practice gratitude report fewer physical symptoms of illness, more optimism, greater goal attainment, decreased anxiety and depression, among other health benefits. Why not offer your thanks to each person who does anything at all for you today? Even if it is their job to help you. When you are grateful, when you let your heart open up and be filled with appreciation, notice how being grateful makes you feel.