Gratitude: to keep us grounded in the present and energised
This is the first of three articles that dive deeper into the concepts I shared in Antidotes to Fear: Gratitude and Purpose. In that article, I was saying that when we need to overcome our fear, we need a solid base under our feet and a powerful leap.
Gratitude gives us the solid ground, and purpose gives us the strength to jump high and far.
Gratitude has the power to bind us to the present moment and energise us.
In this article, I'm going to focus on how to ignite and experience gratitude.
Igniting gratitude: the journey from head to heart
Allowing gratitude to flow: letting the walls down
A transformative exercise: a gratitude letter
When we're overwhelmed by fear, we create multiple scenarios of all the bad things that could happen, we suffer from them, and we get paralysed and debilitated, trapped in our own heads. Igniting and experiencing gratitude for all that we have around us right now, breaks the bars of our mental jail (thus eradicating fear and anxiety), brings us back to the present moment and energises us to take action in the present moment.
1. Igniting gratitude: the journey from head to heart
In Antidotes to Fear: Gratitude and Purpose I recommended beginning with this simple exercise.
Start by experiencing a few minutes of gratitude each morning (first thing when you wake up) and each night (last thing before you go to bed), and several more times in the day, if you want to. Think of at least 5 things or people or situations in your life that you're grateful for in that very moment.
Write them down in your journal. And give yourself a few moments to let the feeling of gratitude permeate your whole self.
Now, one of the biggest challenges this exercise presents is that, while it's relatively easy to write an endless list of things we're aware we can be grateful for, it's not as easy to actually feel the gratitude. In other words, it's much easier to think gratitude in our heads than it is to feel it in our hearts.
The longest journey you will ever take is from your head to your heart.
How can you make that journey? Things work differently for different people. Try this exercise as an experiment where you are the scientist as well as the laboratory.
You can use your head as a way to experiment about what opens your heart.
Here are some ways that worked for some people. You might try saying out loud what you're grateful for, or finding a picture that represents it and using it as background on your phone screen the whole day. If you write a list in your journal, perhaps start each thing with the words thank you. Or try using your body: perhaps you might try getting down on your knees (or envision yourself doing so), bowing your head, and receiving that shower of goodness. See if you can feel it in your heart.
2. Allowing gratitude to flow: letting the walls down
There is increasingly more research showing how gratitude is crucial to joy and contentment. Both How Gratitude Leads to a Happier Life from Psychology Today and Giving Thanks Can Make You Happier from Harvard Health Publishing, for example, talk about the long term impact of gratitude on our mood and health, and also give more ideas on how to ignite it. Here are a few more ways to practise gratitude:
Keep a gratitude journal.
Think of someone who has helped you in life, whether on a daily basis or a one-off.
Take a walk in nature or in your garden.
When you sit at the dining table, think about the people who helped bring the food to your table.
Think about ways that convey gratitude to other people.
Write thank-you notes or thank someone mentally.
Meditate and/or pray.
Count your blessings at least once a day.
Practising gratitude for 5-10 minutes a day for just 2-3 weeks improves mood, optimistic outlook, life satisfaction and connectedness with others. After 2 or 3 months, we even gain a health benefit.
Ultimately, all research seems to point in the same direction:
We're happy because we're grateful, not grateful because we're happy.
Gratitude (and the happiness that comes with it) comes not from gifts or good fortune; rather, gratitude is the result of active practice. So, actively look for ways to practise it despite the resistance you may encounter. Resistance can come from different directions: it can come from feeling insincere when we try to trigger a genuine feeling of gratitude; from guilt for all those who we consider less fortunate than ourselves; or it could come from a feeling of smallness and unworthiness compared to the bountiful goodness we've received from life or from someone in our life.
If you encounter such resistance, don't overthink it but act on it. Pick one or more of the ways to practise gratitude mentioned above and do it. And keep doing it with a genuine intention. At some point (sooner rather than later), your practice will bring the walls down and will allow gratitude to flow through your life.
Ultimately, after regular practice, you'll just be continuously pervaded by an invigorating feeling of gratitude... with nothing specific triggering it.
3. A transformative exercise: a gratitude letter
Of all the ways to practise gratitude mentioned above, I'd like to wholeheartedly recommend one: thank people; tell them in person or write thank-you notes. Expressing gratitude to someone is a powerful way to let it flow through you and then flow back out to others. It's like taking a sledgehammer to the wall. It will just crumble.
So, I'd like to go all the way and recommend a very transformative exercise: write a gratitude letter. Think of a person who's helped you in life, someone who has been really influential in your life, someone who did something really important for you. Write a gratitude letter to them and then actually read it to them.
As a step toward writing your gratitude letter, watch this very inspirational 7 minute video: An Experiment in Gratitude | The Science of Happiness about a study on people's happiness before and after writing a gratitude letter... and then reading it to the person it was addressed to. You might want to keep some tissues next to you. Either while watching this video or while writing your gratitude letter, you might cry but that's a good thing. It means you’ve travelled from your head to your heart That's the connection. That's not being walled off anymore, feeling your feelings, and sharing it with people who you care about.
We've run this exercise with many people and all say it was a great, enriching experience both for them and for the person they wrote and then read the letter to. In the current challenging circumstance, it is going to be more impactful than ever. A dear friend and student of mine just wrote this in a blog post where she recommends writing a gratitude letter:
Now is the time we all need to hear our worth and value for one another.
I'd like to share the story of my first gratitude letter with you.
I wrote my first gratitude letter to my father. Like many, I learnt so much from him, first and foremost ethics and generosity. While we've been enjoying a fantastic relationship for a dozen years now, in the past we went through very turbulent times marked by conflict and distance. It really feels like we earned today's beautiful relationship and, some months ago, I realised we'd never really had a conversation of closure about all the hostile years. So I decided to put all my appreciation and gratitude in a letter to my dad. I cried when I wrote it and he cried when I read it to him. It was a precious moment of reaffirmation and consolidation of our mutual love, which strengthened our relationship even further.
I then wrote a gratitude letter to my mum and am literally in the process of writing one to my brother these days. I can't recommend this (apparently) simple yet profoundly transformative exercise more.
Gratitude is the wine for the soul. Go on. Get drunk. (Rumi)
I hope you've found this article helpful to start or reinforce your gratitude practice. I'll be writing two more articles about purpose and fear in the next few days. In the meantime, feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.
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