Get Happier with Gratitude
November is the month of gratitude so let’s dive into the benefits of this powerful practice that’s proven to make you happier.
First, let’s look at why you’re NOT happy.
The survival part of your brain generates negative emotions that can make you stuck in worry, stress, anger, frustration, shame or guilt. If you wonder, “But aren’t negative emotions good?” Feeling pain for a split second is useful because it delivers an important alert (i.e., when your hand touches a hot stove, you want to know!). But keeping your hand on the hot stove means you’ll cause unnecessary damage. With your emotions, staying stuck in negative ones (keeping your hand on the proverbial “hot stove”) harms your performance and happiness.
The survival part of your brain is constantly looking out for what’s wrong. Without your self-awareness and redirection, it will constantly find a reason to worry or judge … and keep you stuck there.
Second, let’s look at the benefits of gratitude.
Gratitude shifts you out of the negative emotion region of your brain and into the positive region of the brain. This is what you really want to experience in life: love, empathy, curiosity, joy, wonder, creativity, innovation and calm, clear-headed objectivity. These emotions enable you to feel happier, generate joy in the moment and handle challenges most effectively.
Research has shown that keeping a daily gratitude journal also improves sleep, creates a greater sense of well-being, improves your ability to handle change and reduces physical pain.
You can’t be stressed, fearful or angry AND grateful at the same exact time. The more you focus on what you have that’s good, the quicker you can recover from moments of stress, challenges and negativity. The goal isn’t to feel perfect all the time. The goal is to recover to your ideal state and show up at your best.
Knowledge is power - only if you use it. Now is a great time to master gratitude.
Something that separates us humans from other animals is our ability to choose what we focus on. That means we are responsible for curating joy and living in a positive state each day.
You're the Captain of your ship (your life). There are plenty of reasons you can be unhappy and stressed, which can take your ship off-course.
But you have a choice of what to do with each of your thoughts. Gratitude is a quick way to get back on course and into a state of joy.
The key is to make gratitude a habit. And that requires consistent practice.
A few ways you can infuse gratitude into your life:
Buy a gratitude journal and use it every single day. Amazon or your local bookstore will have plenty of options. Or use a regular notebook. Or a scroll of papyrus. It really doesn’t matter - just write down what you’re grateful for each day. Anchor this new habit to something else you’ve already mastered and do it at the same time each day (i.e., brushing your teeth). Set a reminder on your phone or put a post-it note on your bathroom mirror to help you establish the habit in the beginning.
Bring this question into your family dinners so you shift into a state of appreciation and get your whole family to do the same: What’s one thing you’re grateful for today? Go around the table and teach your kids and partner to build this habit that will change their lives, too.
Bring that same question into your team meetings and see what changes when you start everyone off with gratitude. It’s transformative to get people in a positive mental state before you start brainstorming, solving problems or resolving conflict.
Come up with your own way to generate gratitude each day. I like to get outside and experience the beauty of nature, which creates a sense of reverence and appreciation for life.
Make today great.
Practicing gratitude will infuse your life with new focus, energy and optimism. It will cast out like a ripple effect to your family, team and friends.
Start practicing gratitude today.
Need help starting or sustaining new habits like gratitude? Book a call to see how Coach Christine can help with 1:1 coaching or the Positive Intelligence Mental Fitness program, a self-guided, app-based program that is proven to make you feel happier and perform better in just 6 weeks.
