Gratitude: what is it and why should we do it? In this article, I share with you my gratitude practise and some of the science from an experiential perspective of how gratitude can create amazing shifts and expansion in your world.
Let's begin with the question, what is gratitude? According to a key researcher in the field, Robert A Emmons, gratitude has two core components. The first is an affirmation of goodness; the second is the acknowledgement that the sources of this goodness are outside of ourselves.
There's been a lot of research done in the space of gratitude over the last couple of decades, including into relationships and the benefits that can be found with gratitude and relationships, the effects that gratitude has in the activation of the different functions and areas of the brain, and mental well-being, into how free will can promote gratitude, through to the benefits of keeping a daily Gratitude Journal, to the impacts of gratitude and mood, the impacts of gratitude and sleep quality and reduction in worry or distraction, and many, many, many more.
The increasing number of studies around gratitude have been a domino effect, from findings that show the benefits of gratitude on general well-being and very specific areas as well.
So, why don't more people have a gratitude practise or be in a state of gratitude and appreciation more often when it will positively impact their general well-being?
Over the years, one of the observations that I've made is that so many of us believe that we’re content, we're happy, and we have all of the things in our life that we're supposed to have that equal happy and content.
This is really quite different to the state of appreciation. We can certainly be grateful for all of the things that we have in our life.
At the end of the day, you might say:
These are all things that we can identify as being grateful for. But this doesn't always equate to the state of appreciation or the state of gratitude.
Several years ago, I was grateful enough to have been delivering some training from the HeartMath Institute. As part of that program we watched a couple of videos of live demonstrations of the data when somebody went from a state of worry or frustration to a state of appreciation and calm.
Now it was a significant change in heart coherence. Your heart is an absolute powerhouse of electromagnetic energy. Much, much more so than your brain is, which we're led to believe is the controller of our worlds, and it's absolutely not. More energy and more information goes from the heart to the brain than the brain to the heart.
Now that bit aside, I had acquired the HeartMath Heart Coherence measuring device so I could do a live demonstration of heart coherence change.
I'm obsessed with data. I love to see information and correlations and be able to analyse information and raw data.
As I was demonstrating using one of the tools in the program to shift from an emotional state of frustration and worry into a state of appreciation and calm, it was very, very obvious how much my heart coherence changed.
You may be wondering, what’s the difference between this state of appreciation and calm versus the gratitude that you might be feeling for your kids, that you might be feeling for your partner, that you might be feeling for your job or your health or whatever it is?
More often than not, we're thinking about what we're grateful for rather than actually feeling a state of appreciation and gratitude.
And that's the big difference. When we start to feel the state of gratitude in our hearts and allow that to fill our whole and entire body, that's when we are experiencing a state of gratitude and appreciation versus the ‘I think’ I am grateful for, I am grateful for, I am grateful for.
Now both of these elements actually serve a purpose and benefit to our creating a grateful state of being on a longer term basis.
Having a gratitude practise, which often can start at a very mental level, is a very powerful way to begin shifting our thoughts into more grateful thoughts, which can then lead to the feeling of gratitude within our whole state of being.
If you've ever taken a moment, or even 30 minutes to just witness your thoughts on any given day, you might find that they flip flop from one end of the spectrum to the other. And what I mean by that is ranging from a positive thought to a negative thought, back to a positive thought, back to a negative thought.
This will be very dependent upon what your current habitual state of being is. If you are in the habit of whinging or being dramatic or being worryful or being stressed out at very small things, then these are the thoughts that are going to occupy your mind the most.
On the other hand, if you have a tendency and your physical body is more in the state of appreciation, of calm, of peacefulness, of bliss, of happy, of gratitude, of love, then your thoughts are more likely to be representative of those kinds of things.
So, when we start a mental practise of gratitude, we're beginning to create a shift in our state of being, starting with the mind and eventually, our daily practise will encourage more and more thoughts of gratitude, which will then filter into our emotional state of being and energetic state of being.
Alternatively, and even more powerfully, is to start with a heart-based gratitude and appreciation practise. When we do this, we amplify the experience and shift towards that state of gratitude and appreciation much, much faster. We're training our mind through the use of our heart.
The HeartMath Institute has done so much research around the shifts that this can create from when we experience stress situations and the ability and capacity to come back to a state of balance, quickly, drastically improves when somebody has been practising heart-based gratitude and appreciation. Head over to HeartMath Institute – they’ve got some programmes on the site that you can sign up to, as well as free resources available to satiate your curiosity.
I've had a gratitude practise for a number of years now, and it’s almost daily.
Every morning, I write down three things that I am grateful for. In addition to the thing that I'm grateful for I really feel into why it is that I'm grateful for having that thing in my life - feeling into the why is really connecting into and doing that heart-based gratitude practise. For me, it elicits the emotional states that those things or those people create for me internally, and that's what I radiate out into my whole body when I'm really feeling into that thing, person or experience that I'm grateful for.
So, a really yummy way that you can actually apply this practically is by doing it in a journal, putting pen to paper and writing down first thing in the morning when you wake up. Doing them when you wake up is really important because we're coming out of our sleep state so our brain waves are still in a state (alpha). Alpha brain waves are where we have a greater potential to programme the subconscious in the feeling and the knowing of gratitude.
Then there's an opportunity just before bed to really reinforce this gratitude and appreciation state through a self-appreciation practise.
My daily practise is a reflective high five of something that happened on that day that I am proud of, grateful for, or that I appreciate myself for having accomplished.
There are two parts of this that bring a lot of benefits. Firstly, as in the morning practise we are re-engaging that state of gratitude and appreciation when our brain waves are going into alpha, as such tapping into the subconscious mind. Secondly, we're reinforcing to ourselves the things that we appreciate about ourselves.
For me, this is a really, really powerful and juicy one to introduce into a daily practise. If you're not doing the morning practise, definitely do the bedtime one because when we start to appreciate things in ourselves more, we'll start to see and attract those things in our environment and we'll see more of them and the cycle continues. We feel more into ourselves and we see more externally outside of us in our environment.
I'd love to hear how you get on with your daily gratitude practise and the benefits that you start to see in your day-to-day life.
Drop me a message, send me an e-mail or share in the comments to let me know what changes you notice.
Love, hugs and magic!
Bhavna xx
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