Gratitude

The importance of harnessing gratitude and putting it into your daily routine is essential for maintaining your wellness. Especially now when we seem to be inundated with heart breaking news stories, responding to the demands of protecting ourselves from harm, while having to navigate the many aches and pains of isolation! This is hard!! Our minds often go into overdrive in order to help prepare us for an unseen battle. So how is gratitude supposed to help us?

In order to understand how gratitude is helpful we need to understand what it is.  Gratitude is taking a pause, from life's chaos, and noticing and appreciating the things that we often take for granted.   For example, having a place to live, clean water, friends, family, even something as simple as having computer access.  Gratitude is taking a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are when something good happens no matter whether it's big or small.

With that said, practicing daily gratitude helps to shift our minds from the negative.  Bad things happen, that is a part of life. How we choose to handle those moments of disappointment, grief, loss, and frustration depend on how we choose to carry them.  For example,  maybe you feel angry about being stuck in your home with your family, maybe you miss your friends,  maybe you cant stop thinking about getting sick.  We can sit with that ickiness and dwell on it or we can take pause and be grateful for what life has given us.  For example, you can say to yourself, " I am grateful that I am not alone and am surrounded by loved ones, I am lucky to have great friends in my life who I can reach out to, I am lucky to have my health when so many others don't".

Neuroscience research (See link below) has proven many benefits of daily practice of gratitude such as reduced stress, increased production of our "feel good" neurotransmitters,  improved sleep,  ability to regulate emotions, and reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression.  Therefor, I encourage to put gratitude into your daily routine.

Activity Challenge

Create a "five things" list of things you are thankful/grateful for, like the one shown above.  Try and make it a habit to practice each day or taking a minute before you go to sleep to think about what went well in your day.  If you are thankful for a particular person I encourage you to share this with them; giving you a change to spread a little love.

Here are my five things I am grateful for today.

1) Connecting with my friends on Face Time
2) My morning pancakes
3) Getting to see my fiance everyday
4) Having an opportunity to get out in the sun
5) Remembering that I can do hard things 

Spread the love and feel free to leave a comment on what you are grateful for!!!!!


Additional Reading , if you would like to learn more about the science behind gratitude -  https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/