By Michelle Schroeder-Lowrey
Right now, I am leaning a lot on GRATITUDE.
“Gratitude is defined as, “the quality or feeling of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness.””
There is a lot of research out there around how expressing gratitude affects your personal happiness. As humans, we are wired to avoid pain and move towards the things that make us feel good. Sometimes the things we move towards are not in our best interest. However, there are some simple practices we can use to move towards feeling good that our in our best interest, even when situations are difficult.
In her research, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson (Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at UNC-Chapel Hill, Founding Co-Chair of the Association of Positive Emotion Laboratories, and current President of the International Positive Psychology Association) shows that expressing our gratitude to others opens us up and “broadens” our capacity for positive emotions. As we broaden this capacity, we begin to feel good. In fact, we feel so good that we want to repeat that experience, so we “build” on our initial feel good experience by expressing more gratitude. This creates a gratitude cycle that can become a beneficial habitual pattern in a person’s life, rewiring our brains to experience and express more feel-good emotions in a positive and beneficial way.
How Do I Start?
There are so many gratitude practices out there, so there are plenty of options for someone wanting to incorporate more gratitude into their lives and to begin building their pattern of gratitude.
Here are some of my favorite ways to practice gratitude:
Journaling. If you like to journal or write, this is a great option. Write down three to five things for which you are grateful every day. If starting at a blank page feels daunting, write this at the top of the page, “Today I am grateful for…”
Sharing out-loud with family and friends at a meal or at bedtime. Sometimes sharing fits more easily into a schedule, especially when you are building this as a new practice. The added bonus is that it is then a pattern that you are creating as a family.
Asking our children to talk about what is “sticky” for them today or what good or positive event is sticking in their thoughts from today. Often we remember the negative as “sticky” so flipping this to the positive is another way to reinforce good things that happen.
After identifying the positive event that sticks, ask your children how they contributed to making that positive event good. Taking ownership of how “I” helped make it positive provides an extra boost and helps us to savor those moments or little things that are sticking with us.
Like all new patterns and habits, your gratitude practice may not feel like a success the first time you try it. It may feel hard or a little uncomfortable, especially if you are doing something that you don’t normally do, whether it’s journaling or sharing your day as a family over a meal or before you go to bed. That’s okay. Start small and be as consistent as possible to make big gains.
We are not superheroes, we are humans. We are inherently resilient. These practices are simple, but they may not be easy for all of us to implement all of the time. They are “practices” meaning – they take time to master. As we are still being faced with changes in the way we’ve always done things – hello new school year, I’m looking at you – this is as good a time as any to start a new practice that will help and heal rather than hurt and divide. Let’s begin it together.