START A DAILY GRATITUDE PRACTISE

Okey, how many times you found yourseld fixated on the one negative feedback (out of 10 positive ones) you received in your yearly performance review? Did you find yourself playing the uncomfortable, shameful moments of the day at your bed but rarely the positive ones? After you watch the news, do you remember the negative, destructive events or the positive ones?

I know almost all of you realized that you think, play and obsess over negative events more than the positive ones. Why do you think this is? Stay with me, I will explain how this is related to practising gratitude exercises.

Why you should start a daily gratitude practise:

First of all, you have to know your brain is wired to keep you safe and alive, not to make you happy. So when it receives a potential threat, it focuses on it to find a relief from the danger. So you are biologically sensetive to negative events, its in your nature. This is called “Negativity Bias”. If you dont do anything intentional and keep living as it is, you will inevitably be more hooked on negative experiences.

Simon Sinek famously mentioned in his famous TedTalk: The importance of starting with the WHY. This is why I always love to start with why we should do things and than proceed with how. To take back the driver seat and get control of your happiness, you can choose to magnify the positive events in your life. There are different ways to do it but one of the most effective and universal one is to start a gratitude practice daily.

Studies have shown that practising gratitude everyday or weekly can lead to increase in well-being & happiness and less dependence on material possessions. It can enhance your relationship with people and the world around you and even your satisfaction at work.

3 important points to master before you start your practise:

Not all the gratitude practices work, so you should focus on below things first before you start your practice:

Before starting your practice focus on your motivation to feel more positive & grateful first. Realize that you are making a consious decision to become happier & healtier.
Its good to focus on positive events but keep in mind the people in your life and all the ways you are grateful for them. This will help you cultivate your relationships more.
Eventhough you end up writing one or two sentences to your journal. Picture the event or the person it your head in a more eloborate way. Details matter and intensifies the experience.

After understanding why gratitude is important & important points to , lets get into the different ways to practice gratitude.

6 different ways how to start a daily gratitude exercise:

Keeping A Daily Gratitude Journal:

This is by far the most common gratitude practise. Reflecting on the positive events of the day by writing them can magnify their impacts and make you realize what positive experiences you had on that day. Making a list of 3-5 things that you are grateful that day is common practice of keeping a gratitude journal. The list can include big events like, getting a promotion, falling in love, surviving an ilness. It can also include small things like the smell of the morning coffee, the colours of the sunset, a quote that you saw and liked etc… My favourite ones are: Waking up to my sisters laugh, learning something new, meditating everyday (40 days on a row now, I am so proud😇). Keeping a daily journal helps to build a strong habit but its also suggested by the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky that writing in your journal weekly or 2-3 times a week can increase your happiness in the long term more than a daily practice. So the frequency & timings are up to you, but the more calm and focused you are, the better the experience would be.

Here are the best gratitude journal prompts (pdf, word and other templates) existing on the internet, searched and prepared for you:

https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheet/gratitude-journal-three-good-things

https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheet/gratitude-journal

https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheet/why-im-grateful

Taking a Mindful Gratitude Walk:

Imagine walking to your hairdresser after a long work day. What would happen if you focused on the old couple walking with love or the father teaching his son to ride the bicycle or the screaming green color of the trees rather than the dirt on the pavements, the screams coming from people arguing or the rude honk of the driver waiting the red light? I guess your mood changed even within the sentence 😂. If you don’t think writing is for you, thinking about things you are grateful while walking and on top, finding & savoring things to be more grateful in life while walking can have profound impact on your happiness.

Doing Gratitude Meditation:

If you are someone who practises meditation or wish to start a meditation practise. It might be the best to combine gratitude with meditation. Meditation is a great way to increase the focus and let the mind to relax so it can be a great catalizor for gratitude practise. Here are the best practices for you to start your gratitude medidation journey:

*Guided meditation created by Dr. Kathi Kemper, executive director of the Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Center for Integrative Health and Wellness.

https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/gratitude_meditation

*Gratitude Meditation by Live the Life You Love by Jess on Spotify

Headspace (my favourite place to do my meditation).
https://www.headspace.com/meditation/gratitude
Gratitude Meditation by Jack Kornfield, a buddist practitioner.
https://jackkornfield.com/gratitude-meditation/
Best Guided Gratitude Meditation on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCq5MkNem6k

Expressing Gratitude to Someone:

We have people in our life we feel most grateful of but we never really tell them how we feel. Researches show writing a gratitude letter and giving the letter in person brings the biggest mood increase. Think about the people in your life and select one of them. Find a time to sit down and write down how the actions of this person affected your life and how often you remember and appreciate it. After writing the letter, read the letter out load to this person and see how much it changes both of your moods. It might be difficult to do this on a daily basis so you can express your gratitude to people in your daily life, for example the co-worker who helped you, the repairman making the additional effort to fix your problem etc.. Use written & verbal communication to express your gratitude to people. To see how good it feels you can watch below video 🙂

https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheet/gratitude-letter

Practising “Mental Subtraction.”

Okey, this one is a bit tricky but stay with me, I will explain. We have “Hedonic Adaptation” meaning, our minds get used to things. The promotion you have been waiting for long time, the dream house you bought with so much effort and even the love of your life… Your mind gets used to all of them and they don’t affect your happiness levels after a while. One way to break this trap of your mind & feel grateful for the things you have and accomplished is to try “Mental Substraction”. Think about the most important people & events that shaped your life and imagine how your life would be without them. This exercise will make you feel grateful for things you have and break the hedonic cycle your brain is in.

Savoring

You would think that your mind is making the the most of the positive moments in your life and maximizing joy. This is now believed to be not true by Fred Bryant, a social psychologist at Loyola University Chicago. Its scienfically proven that you can take intentional actions to increase the joy you experience. Savoring is to immersely feel, enjoy and prolong the joy you get from the positive experiences in your life. Don’t let the joy to spark and die, cultivate it by savoring it. There are dozens of ways to savor an experince or a moment but the most effective ones are:

*Share your experince with others and describe how it made you feel.

*Be in the moment and dont let negative thinking to take over. You can do this by focusing on your breath and how the joy feels in your body.

*Celebrate yourself. When we achieve or accomplish something, we expect others to congratulate us. We don’t give enough credit to ourself and the effort we put in. We say we got lucky, person X helped us and it could have been even better if we tried tried harder (perfectionist habits 😢). You can choose to hug yourself and say: “You have worked really hard for this. I am proud of you. Look how far you have come”.

*Take that mental snapshot or a picture as well to look at it after but the point is stop and think “Wow! This is beautiful, I really enjoy this. I am grateful to witness this moment.”.

You know realize, you are not making the most of a joyful moment. While you have them, you can intensify the feeling by savoring it.

You might be thinking at this point, why I can’t be happy without effort? Why do I have to create a habit? I certainly felt this way when I first discovered positive psychology. This is why the blog post started with the “negativity bias” and how our brains are wired to firstly survive and not to be happy. Increasing your happiness via doing intentional activities will help you increase your overall wellbeing. So choose and start your gratitude practice today and stick to it. Feel gratitude deeply and increase your happiness.

If you want to learn more about on the subject go check out below websites that inspried me the most: