Gratitude has been coming up a lot lately in my periodical and social media journeys. It was also a surprisingly well-covered topic in my studies of Positive Psychology. I find it to be a disgustingly light word that brings to mind something you would only hear about at the yoga studio. But in fact, it is a booming subject for scientific study among the field of psychology and well-being.
Why is that so? ( I ask while I eat my Vegan Donut. Not to digress, but L.A. is really getting good at the Vegan Donut! Excuse my latest obsession as it creeps into all my subject matters lately. But they really hook you by making you feel like you are being bad, but not that bad. One could say that I am grateful for this very discovery.)
Gratitude is taking the study and intervention health fields by storm because it is showing great strides in post traumatic growth, changing our capacities for resilience and changing our relationships. Gratitude is also one of the tools that can help permanently elevate our hedonic baseline of happiness; The set point that we inherit mostly through genetics, childhood environments and a few other assorted things along the way. Gratitude can be instrumental in helping with the elements of us that come pre-packaged for later in life.
Some of us don’t come by feelings of Gratitude naturally. Gratitude is a practice. It is a conscious effort to cultivate its presents. It is part of learning flexibility in response, thinking and narrative.
How do we practice? There are some really easy and cool ways. My favorite is to write a grateful letter or email to someone once a week. Studies show that if you are actually in the same room as that person and tell them face-to-face why you are Grateful for them, or read the letter to them, you boost the levels of dopamine and start changing your neuroplasticity in the brain much faster.
Another really great way is to keep a Gratitude Journal that you write in once a week. (Studies have shown that once a week Gratitude Journaling has the same positive outcome as journaling every day). Even though once a week is fine for shifting the brain, I sometimes like to do a daily check-in before bed. I ask myself, “What went RIGHT today?” I find this to be a great way to start to activate the Gratitude juices. Then jotting those answers down, you can find your way to things you are feeling Grateful for.
I had to do a Gratitude practice as an assignment during my studies, and I found that the negative and anxiety based chatter at bedtime was lessoning. I could feel the shift in my brain.
Some days I do feel like being miserable and having self pity, and those feelings are real and okay and can be the seed to realizing changes need to be made – but I make sure to try to limit them to a short train ride if possible, and then I go back to re-framing and picking out why the glass is half full.
The practice of being Grateful is in no way a practice for denial. We always need to understand and see clearly our problems that need intervention and solving. We want to aim for seeing our lives and our choices in real time while we do things that help to alter our brains for the better.
It is an exciting time to discover that something we can do that takes a moderate level of effort can change our brain chemistry so profoundly.
