Gratitude is a high-frequency energy, helping you attract what you desire. Scientific research has shown the following benefits from practicing gratitude: improved mental and physical health, better sleep, greater happiness, and improved feelings about yourself and your relationships. “Gratitude is the door, the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the Universe. You open the door through gratitude.” Deepak Chopra.
This may sound overly simplistic, but incorporating a gratitude practice into your life can result in enormous changes. But it’s not enough to think you are grateful, you need to BE grateful. They are two different things, and you will know the difference once you start feeling gratitude in your body.
Feeling is Required
Feeling can be hard for people. I know because I went through the first 36 years of my life being almost completely shut off from emotion. I didn’t know any different and thought: “it’s just how I am.” Now that I’ve spent nearly a decade healing myself physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, I realize that as a child I was not allowed to have emotions. Not only was I not allowed to have them, I learned that my emotions were not important. It was the emotions of the adults that mattered. I went through life avoiding them because they felt uncomfortable when they arose. I didn’t know “how” to experience them in a healthy way.
Although I’ve had many hard times, I was 36 when I experienced one of the most difficult times of my life. Without going into detail about what was happening, let’s just say the world felt like it was crumbling down around me. I felt alone, sad, and unhappy, and believed I was a victim to the things happening around me. I didn’t have healthy ways of coping with the emotions I was having, which was making it more difficult to move through the things I had buried so deeply inside myself for so long. After getting to what felt like my lowest point, I started making changes.
I found a therapist I liked and felt comfortable talking to. I changed my lifestyle significantly—I stopped drinking alcohol, began moving my body more, and incorporating more fulfilling activities in my life. I remember many people telling me that incorporating a gratitude practice was so important. I would try to start a gratitude journal and then I would stop. I felt like nothing was happening. I didn’t get it.
I would make myself feel bad because I would think “of course I’m grateful.” I had a good life, and although I’d had bad times, my life was still better than a lot of people’s. I would say that journaling just wasn’t for me and continued with my life. I can see now that it felt like nothing was happening because I thought I was grateful, but I didn’t feel grateful. Thinking you’re grateful happens in your mind; feeling grateful happens in your body. I didn’t know the difference because I had been avoiding emotions for so long.
Because I was still learning how to feel, I was having a hard time feeling gratitude. Once you feel it, you know the difference between thinking it and feeling it. To feel it, you must be ready, willing, and able to let all your emotions come in, not just what we perceive as the good ones. The more life you’re willing to let in, the more gratitude you can let in.
Don’t Bypass Emotions to Get to Gratitude
People often misinterpret being in gratitude for “don’t feel other emotions.” It’s important to realize that you can experience the full range of emotions AND be in gratitude. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. You can have a bad day and still feel grateful. You can experience loss, sadness, anxiety, stress, disappointment, and still have gratitude for what the experiences gave you and how they served you. Don’t avoid emotions because you are only trying to be in gratitude.
If you’d asked me even five years ago whether I could have gratitude for the things I perceived as “bad” having happened in my life I would have told you, “No, absolutely not.” While I recognized that going through those “bad” things got me to where I was in that moment, I still wished they had never happened. Now, I have gratitude for them. I’m grateful they happened, but that doesn’t mean I agree with them or don’t feel sad or angry about them. I’m allowed to feel both. I don’t wish they never happened, because I know they served me, even if I didn’t like them.
If you are afraid to feel your emotions, it will feel hard as you’re doing it. If you are willing to start allowing emotions in and feeling them as they arise, it is so much easier to deal with them. They don’t get stuck inside you. Practice, practice, practice. The more you practice feeling your emotions, the easier it can be. And you will experience more gratitude without even needing to be so conscious of it.
Life is Happening For You, Not to You
People who regularly practice gratitude will tell you they know life is happening “for” them, not “to” them. They are not victims, but people living through human experiences. People who feel grateful have very different perceptions as they move through life, even when unexpected or unfortunate things happen. Again, it’s not about bypassing negative emotions, but about allowing them to exist with gratitude. Not everything has to be either/or, which is how we are often programmed to think.
The difference when you live in gratitude is that things are no longer perceived as “bad” or “negative;” they just are. No matter who you are and how much gratitude you have, life will happen. Things will arise that feel bad. It’s how you respond to them that makes the difference. My experience is that living in gratitude completely changed the lens through which I view the world and my human experience. It’s so much better now! I’m reminded every day, no matter what is going on, that everything is happening for me.
You Recognize the “Good” and the “Bad”
One of the biggest things a regular gratitude practice has given me is recognition for all the amazing things that are happening in my life every day. Something I noticed is that if something I perceived as bad or negative happened during the day, it would completely erase all of the good things that happened that same day, because I would be so focused on the bad thing. We tend to remember bad or negative things as much or more than the good things. At least, I did.
When I was working full-time as an attorney, I can see in hindsight how often this would happen. As an example, I might get to work in the morning and get great news in a client case. I became an attorney to help people and there was often no better feeling than knowing I helped someone achieve the result they were wanting and for which they hired me. I would be delighted and perhaps share a celebratory call or email exchange with my client. Then, I had to continue with my day. If I later received bad news in a case or something unexpected occurred (which is nearly all the time), I would forget about the win. It was frustrating because it felt like the win didn’t actually happen.
Now, I spend time in my day reflecting on everything that happened, with the intention of gratitude. I write down the things that I’m grateful for in that day and it often reminds me of great things that happened and for which I forgot or were overshadowed by other goings on. Our days are busy and so much happens in a short period of time, it can be hard to remember everything that happened if you’re not taking time for reflection. A regular gratitude practice helps with this.
How to Practice Gratitude
My gratitude practice is journaling. I write down at least 25 things that I’m grateful for, every day. Sometimes I do it at night, or sometimes in the morning. I do it when it feels most aligned, but the important thing is that I do it regularly. If journaling isn’t your thing, that’s okay. There are other simple ways to regularly practice gratitude. Also, if you think coming up with 25 things sounds like a lot, I challenge you to do it! If five sounds easy, you need to stretch yourself to do something more. If you don’t stretch yourself, then you are keeping yourself from growing, which is another topic for another blog post.
There are a lot of ways to practice gratitude:
If you prefer to say it out loud, verbalize 10 things you’re grateful for each day.
Do a gratitude meditation or breathwork session.
Start a gratitude jar.
Write down things you’re grateful for on post it notes and place them around your home, your car, and other places you will see them regularly.
Take a gratitude walk—set the intention that you are going to be present and recognize all there is to be grateful for as you enjoy nature and being outside.
Write a gratitude letter to someone who makes you feel grateful—you don’t have to give it to the person if you don’t want. It's the exercise of being in gratitude that matters; not the giving of the letter.
Spend time with pets or loved ones that make you feel grateful.
Volunteer your time to help others.
There are infinite ways to practice gratitude. It’s the intention you have while you’re doing the thing. If having a regular gratitude practice seems like just another thing you must do every day, then I would tell you not to bother. It’s the energy and intention you have for the practice that matters. It’s not about adding another thing to a check list that you need to complete. It’s about feeling! When you feel grateful, you know it. And more abundance comes to you.
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