Protocol for Practising Gratitude

Little did the native American botanist, author, an American distinguished teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, know that the Indic Sanatan tradition had realised it ages ago that we should feel grateful not only to the people we interact with, but also to the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the mountains, the sea, the trees and all those animate and inanimate beings by whose existence or mere presence, human race had survived and made huge strides in cultural evolution. Our ancestors were aware that gratitude offers us a way of embracing all that makes our lives better in many ways. More than a happy feeling, gratitude encompasses the willingness to expand our attention so that we perceive more of the goodness we are always receiving.

In the past two decades, a growing body of evidence in the field of social science has found that gratitude has measurable benefits for just about every area of our lives. Gratitude appears to contribute substantially to individual well-being and physical health inasmuch as the Greater Good Science Centre at the University of California, Berkeley – a leader in research on the science of social and emotional well-being – describes gratitude as the “social glue” key to building and nurturing strong relationships.

Robert Emmons, Professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of gratitude, defines gratitude as having two parts. The first is an affirmation of goodness: People can learn to wake up to the good around them and notice the gifts they have received. The second part of gratitude is recognizing that the source of this goodness rests outside of oneself – that we receive these gifts from other people, and sometimes from a higher power, fate, or the natural world. In other words, gratitude helps people realize that they would not be where they are without the help of others.

Gratitude is more than just a momentary good feeling. Scientists who have studied written gratitude interventions, such as gratitude letters or journals, have found benefits for an individual’s mental health and well-being. Gratitude practices also appear to help people feel more satisfied in life and can boost their self-esteem, according to peer-reviewed research. In a study involving nearly 300 adults seeking counselling services at a University, one randomized group wrote a gratitude letter each week for three weeks. The gratitude group reported significantly better mental health (compared to the control group) at follow-up, 12 weeks after the last writing exercise. Another type of written gratitude practice is counting blessings, or “Three Good Things.” A study of this practice found that people who wrote down three things that had gone well in their day and identified the causes of those good things were significantly happier and less depressed, even six months after the study ended. People, in general, are more cognitively aware of their “headwinds” (or barriers they face) than “tailwinds” (benefits they receive). By paying more attention to our tailwinds, studies have shown, we can accentuate feelings of happiness, optimism, and positive emotion. “Strengthening your positive recall bias makes it easier to see the good things around you even when times are dark,” says Nancy Davis Kho, author of the book The Thank-You Project: Cultivating Happiness One Letter of Gratitude at a Time. Nancy set a lofty goal of writing 50 thank-you letters to people in her life and found that the practice improved her ability to weather some of life’s bigger challenges. At first, she found it difficult to come up with a list of 50 people. After she got started on the letters, the practice naturally boosted positive emotion and she was able to extend her gratitude well beyond her family and friends. Nancy encourages those writing gratitude letters to find “the creative people whose work carries you beyond yourself, whose vision helps you clarify your own, whose talent and hard work have combined to create a body of work that brings you simple joy.”

Practicing gratitude can be a game-changer inasmuch as has it has incredible and far-reaching effects, from improving our mental health to boosting our relationships with others. Living life with gratitude helps us notice the little wins – like the bus showing up right on time, a stranger holding the door for you, or the sun shining through your window when you wake up in the morning. Each of these small moments strings together to create a web of well-being that, over time, strengthens our ability to notice the good. Building our capacity for gratitude isn’t difficult. It just takes practice. The more we can bring our attention to that which we feel grateful for, the more we’ll notice to feel grateful for!

Let us start by observing. Just notice the thank yous we say. Just how much of a habitual response is it? Is it a hasty aside, an afterthought? How are we feeling when we express thanks in small transactions? Stressed, uptight, a little absent-minded? When our instinct to say “thanks” arises, let us stop for a moment and take note. Can we name what we feel grateful for, even beyond the gesture that’s been extended? Then say thank you. According to Prof. Robert Emmons, there are two key components of practicing gratitude: (i) We affirm the good things we’ve received and (ii) We acknowledge the role other people play in providing our lives with goodness. Most of us know it’s important to express thanks to the people who help us, or silently acknowledge the things we are grateful for in life. Research has linked gratitude with a wide range of benefits, including strengthening our immune system and improving sleep patterns, feeling optimistic and experiencing more joy and pleasure, being more helpful and generous, and feeling less lonely and isolated.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.” Saying thank you, holding the door for someone, these little moments can change the tone of our whole day. One of the most powerful ways to rewire our brain for more joy and less stress is to focus on gratitude. If you want to make the most out of opportunities to flex your gratitude muscles, you must look creatively for new situations and circumstances in which to feel grateful. There are other simple ways to become and feel more grateful.

After observing, start journaling. As such, there’s no wrong way to keep a gratitude journal, but we have to get started. The practice of writing in a journal, a diary, or just scribbling notes to ourselves on pieces of paper, has both a rich history and present-day appeal. To overcome the initial hesitation, just write down up to five things for which you feel grateful. The physical record is important – don’t just do this exercise in your head. The things you list can be relatively small in importance or relatively large. The goal of the exercise is to remember a good event, experience, person, or thing in your life – then enjoy the good emotions that come with it. The famous 20th-century novelist and diarist Anaïs Nin believed writing serves “to heighten our own awareness of life…to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.” She was on to something. Writing has a remarkable way of shifting our awareness – keeping a journal can be an accessible way to experience that shift.

As a hobby, journaling is inexpensive, portable, and can brighten our quality of awareness, making sense of our thoughts, feelings, perspectives, our own developing story line as it happens. It gives us a chance to slow down, breathe, turn to a fresh page, and “get real” about what we’re thinking and feeling – also referred to, particularly in therapeutic settings, as expressive writing. Although we refer here to writing, journaling is not only about putting words on paper. Visual journals filled with sketches, doodles, or any form of art you desire, vastly expand the options and the accessibility of journaling practice. You don’t have to erase your doodles, correct your grammar, or worry about garnering ‘likes’ and ‘emojis’ from a virtual fan club. In other words, expressive journaling is expressing yourself, for yourself.

Make optimum use of your senses. Through our senses – the ability to touch, see, smell, taste, and hear – we gain an appreciation of what it means to be human and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive. Seen through the lens of gratitude, the human body is not only a miraculous machine, but also a gift.

It pays to share your gratitude with others. Research has found that expressing gratitude can strengthen relationships. Therefore, the next time your partner, friend or family member does something you appreciate, be sure to let them know. To be grateful in your current state, it is helpful to remember the hard times that you once experienced. It would be worthwhile to meditate on your relationships with parents, friends, siblings, work associates, children, and partners using these three questions: “What have I received from each of them?”, “What have I given to them?”, and “What troubles and difficulty have I caused?” While introspecting when you remember how difficult life used to be and how far you have come, you set up an explicit contrast in your mind, and this contrast forms a fertile ground for gratefulness.

The two primary obstacles to gratefulness are forgetfulness and a lack of mindful awareness. Visual impressions are more impacting and lasting and visual reminders can serve as cues to trigger thoughts of gratitude. Often times, the best visual reminders are other people. In recalling, acknowledging and expressing gratitude, your language assumes importance too. Grateful people have a particular linguistic style that uses the language of gifts, givers, blessings, blessed, fortune, fortunate, and abundance. In gratitude, you should not focus on how inherently good you are, but rather on the inherently good things that others have done on your behalf.

At times when you may feel down, remember that the world of touch and texture is there to beckon us. We find so much to be grateful for in touch! If there’s someone near who you can hug or who can hug you, notice how this makes you feel filled with gratitude for the joy of human contact as culturally permitted. Or perhaps you have a beautiful pet that you can stroke and cuddle, or some lovely material with a texture that feels warm to the touch, soft, evocative. Let your senses ignite your gratitude! There’s so much to be appreciative of. You could also shift to noticing and appreciating objects around you. Now take a moment to look around: look down, look up, and from side to side. Appreciate how much effort must have gone into anything at all you own or use. Someone conceived of the need and many people worked on the details of the design. Much care even went into the packaging to deliver your item to you safely. Let yourself be grateful that all that talent went into making your life a little easier.

In practising gratitude, our determination and resolve also matter. Make a vow to Practice Gratitude. Research shows that making an oath to perform a behaviour increases the likelihood that the action will be executed. Therefore, write your own gratitude vow, which could be as simple as “I vow to count my blessings each day,” and post it somewhere, where you will be reminded of it every day.

Gratitude benefits our brains in more ways than one. It helps relieve stress and pain. The regions associated with gratitude are part of the neural networks that light up when we socialize and experience pleasure. These regions are also heavily connected to the parts of the brain that control basic emotion regulation, such as heart rate and arousal levels, and are associated with stress relief and thus pain reduction. Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows the subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us. These finding are on the basis of a research under publication. It can improve our health over time. They are also closely linked to the brain’s “mu opioid” networks, which are activated during close interpersonal touch and relief from pain—and may have evolved out of the need for grooming one another for parasites. In other words, our data suggest that because gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, this may explain in part how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time. It can help even those with depression. Perhaps even more encouraging, researcher Prathik Kini and colleagues at Indiana University performed a subsequent study examining how practicing gratitude can alter brain function in depressed individuals. They found evidence that gratitude may induce structural changes in the very same parts of the brain that we found active in our experiment. Such a result, in complement to our own, tells a story of how the mental practice of gratitude may even be able to change and re-wire the brain.

As you end this practice, carry this attitude of gratitude with you. Close with gratitude. I’m so grateful that you tuned in to this gratitude practice, and I appreciate your time, your effort, and your energy to be present, awake, and alive to your precious life. Have grateful and beautiful days ahead.

Bhushan Lal Razdan, formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), Chandigarh. Post-retirement, he is actively associated with medical, educational, cultural and heritage issues and joined various societies and trusts to promote these objectives. Occasionally he contributes articles of contemporary relevance in Newspapers and Magazines.

He is also Chairman of Vitasta Health Care Trust.