Gratitude is an effective tool because it connects us with everything and everyone. It moves us outside our internal world of “me, me, me” and into connection with the world around us. It slows us down to recognize the miraculous nature of what we are experiencing. This does not mean you have to be grateful for traumatic experiences, unless you want to.
In the morning as I walk up to the subway to go to work, I thank the Moon, I thank the Sun, and I thank the sky. I thank the world for hosting me here and providing me with what I require to live, and I thank the universe for being so magical, unknowable, unpredictable, and for creating this life that we get to enjoy. I am typically happier when I start my day with these thoughts versus the days that I do not. Why is that?
“At a neurobiological level, gratitude regulates the sympathetic nervous system that activates our anxiety responses, and at the psychological level, it conditions the brain to filter the negative ruminations and focus on positive thoughts (Wong et al., 2018).”
“The limbic system is the part of the brain that is responsible for all emotional experiences. It consists of the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and cingulate gyrus. Studies have shown that the hippocampus and amygdala, the two main sites regulating emotions, memory, and bodily functioning, get activated with feelings of gratitude (Wong et al., 2018).”
“This part of the brain includes reward pathways and the hypothalamus, which can boost serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine, improving mood and making us feel good (Zahn et al., 2008) positivepsychology.com.”
Research from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center offers an interesting insight into this:
A study around writing letters of gratitude noted, “people who used more positive emotion words and more ‘we’ words in their gratitude letters didn’t necessarily have better mental health later. It was only when people used fewer negative emotion words in their letters that they were significantly more likely to report better mental health. In fact, it was the lack of negative emotion words—not the abundance of positive words—that explained the mental health gap between the gratitude writing group and the other writing group.
Perhaps this suggests that gratitude letter writing produces better mental health by shifting one’s attention away from toxic emotions, such as resentment and envy. When you write about how grateful you are to others and how much other people have blessed your life, it might become considerably harder for you to ruminate on your negative experiences (Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley).”
As we like to say here at The Gatehouse, what we choose to focus on expands. Write a letter to someone sharing why you are grateful for them—the impact remains whether the letter is sent or not. You can also write out a list of all the things you are grateful for that day. We often seem to remember the one negative thing about our day and let that color the entire experience—so take the time to remember what your day was actually like, even the small parts that might’ve made it slightly brighter.
Gratitude, when practiced intentionally, doesn’t erase hardship—it reminds us that even within it, moments of light still exist.