Saturday 27 November 2021
Somewhere in the North Carolina Mountains
An Attitude of Gratitude
Part 4 - How To Practice Thankfulness And Gratefulness.
The Influential Person
Think of someone in your life, past or present, who has had a good, positive influence in your life. Please mentally select someone who is living. It could be a family member, a teacher, a friend, a mentor, anyone that fits these parameters.
Once you have mentally selected the person visualize their face, put them at the top of your mind. Repeat their name to yourself a few times. Think about the thing or things they did for you. Now, file them away for later.
How to practice thankfulness.
Use Your Words
Say “thank you” to nearly everyone for nearly everything. Write it down; leave people thank you notes. Write thank you cards, mail them.
Get in the habit. Say it. Write it. Say it. Write it.
That is how you practice thankfulness.
Research indicates that when you thank someone for what they have done for you, they not only are more likely to help you again, they are more likely to help other people. Thankfulness can spread like a positive contagion that can literally transform families, workplaces, and communities.
How to practice gratitude.
This is a little harder, but there are lot of things you can do to practice gratitude. Remember that the key to gratitude is “remembering to remember.”
Savor
To keep the good things that happen in your day-to-day life from slipping through your mind, you’ve got to put a kind of net in place to catch them. You do that by intentionally savoring and relishing positive moments. When something good happens to you, whether big or small – a hug from your child, a tasty meal, a beautiful sunset – instead of letting it quickly flit in and out of your awareness, take ten seconds or so to really soak in the pleasure/beauty/joy of it.
Reframe/Redirect
Even in times of acute hardship, while it is unlikely that you will feel grateful for the suffering, you can still feel grateful in the suffering. That is, you can still find small mercies and points of light even in your darkest hour. If you’re going to be walking through hell anyway, why do it without gratitude, and make the trial even harder than it has to be?
Record It
Consider starting a gratitude journal, or if you are already keeping a journal, then once or twice a week write down a few things for which you’re thankful. Don’t do it every single day. You can create gratitude fatigue. Don’t make it a task or a chore, just come up with little ways to remember.
Pray
Recount and reflect on the on the things for which you are thankful, and then express that to God. Again, you’re remembering to remember.
Fast
Pick a day and spend that day without something. It doesn’t have to be food. You can take a “fast” from many things: your phone, your computer, your washer, your dryer, your microwave, on and on…
Lack and scarcity can really sharpen your gratitude, and help you to remember to remember.
Memento Mori
Okay, I had to look this up. I knew it had something to do with remembering. What it means bluntly is to “Remember Mortality.” Remember death. Life is short. The new heaven and the new earth are coming. Remember to remember.
Serve
One of the greatest ways to express gratitude is to not just thank others for what they’ve given to you, but to try to pay it forward by striving to give back. Service is a spiritual discipline in and of itself.
Gratitude Summary
The practice of gratitude has practical, tangible benefits to body and mind. Research has shown that practicing gratitude boosts the immune system, bolsters resilience to stress, lowers depression, increases feelings of energy, determination, and strength, and even helps you sleep better at night. In fact, few things have been more repeatedly and empirically vetted than the connection between gratitude and overall happiness and well-being.
Becoming more grateful does not involve a denial of the reality of life’s hard edges and sharp sorrows. Rather, while gratitude recognizes the dark corners of existence which readily attract our attention, it also notices all the Beauty, Joy, Goodness, and Truth that is typically overlooked.
Gratitude opens one’s eyes to a more expansive view of reality. Gratitude makes the world real. Gratitude allows you to experience the joy of your joy. Through the lens of gratitude, you come to better recognize the good, to see the many gifts, benefits, and mercies that are present in your life that might otherwise remain hidden and ignored.
The presence of gratitude counteracts vices such as envy, resentment, and greed. When you are grateful for what you have, you spend less time comparing yourself to others, and less time making poor, fruitless decisions based on those comparisons.
Research has found that gratitude has a huge effect on improving relationships. Studies show that grateful people experience greater feelings of connection and closeness with others and with God, and are more compassionate, forgiving, generous, and supportive than the ungrateful.
Remember the person I asked you to think of? Go give them a hug, or call them, or whatever you need to do to express your gratitude to them.
Be grateful. Be happy.
I hope you have enjoyed this series. Please share it.
James A. Weaks