Extending Gratitude

We have been hearing for a few years now that being grateful can have huge positive benefits for the mental health of those who practice it. But why is this? There is a bias in humans towards retaining more negative than positive memories as a primitive strategy for staying alert to threat. This has helped us as a species to survive. So making a conscious effort to notice what we have, rather than what we don’t have helps us to combat this focus on negativity, and allows us to feel better about who we are and what is important to us. If we regularly focus on what we are grateful, we can make a real contribution to our own positive mental health.

I have recently been following an online course on “The Work that Reconnects” created by Joanna Macey which “is a series of experiences and rituals used by communities to facilitate the empowering of the human community into a potent and resilient force for positive change.” For more information, go to: https://theworkthatreconnectssa.wordpress.com/the-work-that-reconnects/

The first step of this process is Stepping into Gratitude which I love because it calls on us to really think about the context of our gratitude; we are encouraged to think about what we are grateful for and to whom. It encourages us to extend a simple gratitude statement, such as ‘I am grateful that I have good friends’ to a more specific focus, e.g. I am grateful to my friend, Annabel, for the care and support she has shown me over the last few months whilst my dad has been unwell’. Filling out the details of our gratitude encourages us to drill down to a deeper connection with it requiring us to think more actively about what or who we value and why.

I have recently taken this a step further by doing something proactive with this sentiment of gratitude. I am committing myself to a weekly habit of not just writing down in a journal what I am grateful for and to what or whom but marking that connection in some meaningful way. So if I am grateful to somebody, I am sending them a short hand-written note to convey how much I value our relationship, what they mean to me or what it is specifically they do or have done for me. I am choosing to write by hand and send a short notelet as this holds greater value for me than sending a text. As well as deepening my connection with the feeling of gratitude, I hope that the recipients of my notes will feel seen and valued and that this will nurture and strengthen our relationship.

Sometimes I am grateful to non-humans, e.g. the natural world, my dog (Otto – see photo), my health, my education, etc. In this case, I’ll be looking for an appropriate way to express my appreciation and deepen the gratitude and connection I feel: e.g. I may spend time in nature writing a poem about what I am  appreciating and how it benefits me (and sharing it aloud); I may give Otto a long back scratch whilst I tell him how good life is with him; if it’s something abstract, like a good night’s sleep, I might spend 5-10 minutes mindfully creating a drawing or a poem, or singing a song that reflects what I am feeling and valuing.

The result? Well it’s early days, but I am hoping that by feeling deeply connected to the good things and people in my life, this will have a positive ripple effect on my general well-being and it will extend to others around me. And given the difficult and painful state of the world which seems to be scarred by disconnection, mistrust and trauma right now, we could all do with feeling better about life….