Learn to be more effective in your gratitude practice E56
August 23, 2022
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I want to talk to you today about how you can go deeper and get more benefits out of your gratitude practice. We will not talk about the typical gratitude practises of writing down 3 things that you have been grateful for today – no, we will go deeper and learn how we can elevate our gratitude practice to a new level. So let’s get started!
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The typical gratitude practice that you find online when you search for one online is to write things down that you are grateful for, think about them or say them out loud. For example at the end of each day, write down 3 things that you have been grateful for on that day. And then some practises tell you as well to bring up the feeling of gratitude. To really feel into the emotion of thankfulness and gratitude.
That is already a good step in the right direction. But there is so much more that we can do. I am going to share with you how my gratitude practice has evolved over the last year and what I have discovered as part of my research for this episode – which is a much more effective way of gratitude practice than the usual way.
Why do I need a gratitude practice?
But let’s take a step back first in case you don’t even have a gratitude practice and you are currently asking yourself why you should even have one in the first place. So let’s look at the benefits of a gratitude practice on 2 levels:
- the mental health impact
- the physical or bodily health impact.
When we talk about a gratitude practice then we talk about something that you do regularly. Scientists and psychologists have been able to measure health benefits and improvements when someone has a solid gratitude practice which is not a one-off event. The importance is on regular practising instead of the length of the practice.
A solid gratitude practice can be as short as 1 minute – the important factor is that is done on a regular basis so repeatedly over an extended period of time. For example daily or a few times per week over a period of months or years. Just to clarify what we mean by a gratitude practice.
Benefits to your mental health practising gratitude
Now let’s talk about the benefits to our mental health. When asked people report feeling happier, they have more meaning in their life, more joy and mental balance. There are studies that show that a gratitude practice increases people’s resilience in trauma situations. That can be for past trauma and people are able to handle these now better in their lives. And it can strengthen their resilience to deal with trauma that might happen in the future. And that is achieved by shifting the focus and attention away from fear and trauma responses which dials down these neural networks in the brain and dials up other neural networks associated with positive outlooks on life.
Another benefit that studies have found is the improvement of social relationships. And that is not only the relationships where you actively express or receive more gratitude but the quality of your relationships in general improves.
Benefits to your physical health practising gratitude
When it comes to our physical health benefits you can achieve with a gratitude practice one of them is the measurable changes in the brain. By activating specific neurological networks in your brain, you adjust your state of being. If you activate more supportive and positive networks in your brain, your outlook on life in general improves and with that your physical health as well. All of your systems in your brain and body received different kinds of information, chemicals and impulses that have a positive impact on your overall health.
Experience the emotion and energy of gratitude
By making certain changes in my gratitude practice I have been able to experience some of these benefits even though I have never really measured them. The one big change I made was to focus more on the experience of the emotion in itself. Instead of focusing on the situation that gives me the feeling of gratitude I put my attention on the emotion in itself.
And how do I do that? The best way for you to do it is to focus on the feeling of gratefulness in your heart. You bring up the emotion and you feel the emotion in your heart. So all of your focus and attention goes to the place where your heart sits. And you just keep sticking with that for a while.
What you do there is that you give the attention of your conscious mind which is energy. So you are diverting energy to your heart space to increase the energy and power of that emotion. The first few times you might practise it, it might not work – but don’t give up. If you keep practising you will start feeling something in your heart and you will feel the emotion of gratitude getting stronger.
Strengthen the energy of the emotion of gratitude
And why would you want to do it? The frequency of the emotion of gratitude is the reason why all of these benefits in your body and mind occur. So the stronger the frequency the stronger the reaction in the body and therefore the stronger the benefits. Does this make sense? If you want something to work quicker, you give it more energy like electricity, water or brain power.
You can do the same with your attention. Your focus and your attention are energy as well and by focusing it on your heart and holding the emotion of gratitude, you create more energy and a stronger vibration in your body.
The frequency of gratitude is one of the highest vibrating emotions that you can feel. It creates the ability to heal, create, manifest, love (Episode 31), and attract. It helps you to change your perspective, come up with new ideas, see new solutions and increase your energy levels and your complete state of being.
Move from thinking and feeling grateful to being grateful
And that is already the second insight that helped me to improve my gratitude practice. It’s that we want to experience gratitude not only in our practices when we give it our thoughts and our feelings, but that we want it to become a state of being.
Gratitude is a mindset that activates parts of the brain to set a context for your life, for your state of being. When you keep practising thinking and feeling gratitude, you start to become grateful. This means that you are changing your state of being towards living your life in a constant grateful state. That’s where I start to find myself in more and more.
Feeling grateful for all the small and normal things in my life
I think the first stage of that was that I started to be grateful for smaller things in my life. Especially in the areas of nature, like watching a butterfly or touching or smelling a particularly beautiful flower. Sometimes I would even be in awe of the shapes of leaves on trees when I look up into the sky.
I know this sounds like I am watching my life through rose-tinted glasses or that I might be on drugs. But that’s how it feels when your state of being moves to a more positive state in this case gratitude. You become grateful for so many small and normal things which makes you feel even more grateful – it’s like a magical cycle instead of a vicious cycle.
Again it needs your practice and your attention in your regular gratitude practice. But when you keep going and keep increasing the emotion inside of you, this benefit will happen inside of you without your conscious mind needing to do anything. It’s like you get the ball rolling and it gets momentum and you are beginning to become or more happy, joyful and grateful person in general. That is what I mean by you moving from thinking and feeling in gratitude to you being in gratitude.
And on top of the mental and physical well-being that you keep creating through it, you move your outlook on life in a more positive direction (Episode 5). And you know about the law of attraction. If you think and feel more positive you attract more positivity into your life. So it’s a win-win situation!
Receiving gratitude is the more effective gratitude practice
Now the last insight I wanted to give you is one that I just learned about today. As part of my research as preparation for this episode, I came across a podcast episode of the Huberman Lab, from the amazing NeuroScientist Andrew Huberman. I will link the episode for you and is so worthwhile watching.
So he has discovered through looking at certain studies, recent as well as older ones, that there is a more effective way to practice gratitude than the typical way we already know and talked about.
Typical gratitude practises tell you to give gratitude for something that you have or just received. When you are asked to write daily in your gratitude journal the questions mostly sound like this: What are you grateful for? What are the things you are grateful for today?
It’s more about receiving gratitude than giving gratitude
So you see it is about giving gratitude to something or someone. These studies that Andrew Huberman has come across have shown that a more effective way of gratitude practice is to receive gratitude.
There has been a study where they measured the brain activity of people at the same time when one received gratitude and one gave gratitude. And what they realised is that the impact was much more potent and therefore would increase the benefits in the person’s brain that received gratitude.
That is a huge surprise and I am so happy that I discovered this new data and research. It means by shifting the focus in your gratitude practice you can increase the impact and all of the benefits inside of you. Brilliant!
Learn to be more effective in your gratitude practice
But what would that look like? Instead of focusing on things that you are grateful for, you want to focus on situations where you create the feeling of receiving gratitude. Do you see the difference? When I learned this earlier today I immediately tried it out. So I closed my eyes and first I focused on someone that has done something for me recently and how grateful I am for this person and what they did for me. And then I focused on a situation where I did something for the person and when they said thank you to me, how did it make me feel?
Wow, there was a clear difference in the feeling as well in the intensity inside of my heart. The feeling of receiving thankfulness was so much stronger. It was amazing to feel that difference straight away.
So the difference is to bring up the emotion of receiving gratitude and not giving gratitude
I hope I was able to explain the difference to you. But what can we draw on now for our gratitude practice? We can of course draw on real-life situations that we experienced in the past where someone gave us gratitude. But if we don’t want to wait for people to come around to give us gratitude the same effect and heightened emotion can be created by stories of other people who were helped and then given gratitude.
Again there was a study where this was tested and it works when you connect with a story that highly resonates with you and you can connect with the emotion of receiving gratitude. It needs to of course work for you and be meaningful for you. So what I already did is I bought this book by Brad Aronson – Humankind: Changing the World One Small Act At a Time on Audible for me to read more of these kinds of stories when I go for a walk or when I am driving my car.
Select a story of receiving gratitude and repeat it in your gratitude practice
Huberman mentions in his episode that we don’t want to spend our energy on finding new stories but rather focus on one that is particularly meaningful for us – it could even be something that happened to another person in your family or in your circle of friends. And then you just make a few notes for yourself on this story: what was the situation, what was the help that was given and how did it make you feel? And then you use this story or a real-life situation again and again in your practice. It’s all about repetition for your brain to switch on these helpful and positive neural networks quicker and strengthen them over time.
So I hope all of these tips and insights into my practice and the new info from Andrew Huberman have given you enough raw material to elevate your gratitude practice or for you to even start one in the first place. Let me know how it went and I will keep you updated as well on mine.
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You Might Also Like
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- Receiving messages from my Higher Self Episode 99
- The balance of being grateful & still wanting more Episode 104
Free Meditation to Create Gratitude Inside of You
During this meditation, I share with you amazing facts about why you can be grateful to be alive and to be human.
I’ve created two versions for you to choose from based on how you are feeling and how much time you have: 14-Minute OR 11-Minute.
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