“Gratitude heals, energizes, and transforms lives.” Robert Emmons, Ph.D.
How often do you feel thankful for the good things in your life? Studies suggest that making a habit of noticing what’s going well in your life and practicing gratitude could have wealth, health and emotional well-being benefits, according to the National Institute (NIH) of Health News in Health.
The author of “The Millionaire Mind”, Dr. Thomas J. Stanley, tells a terrific story of meeting with several former University of Alabama football players of the legendary Coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant, who were all successful business owners and senior executives in companies. Dr. Stanley asked questions of the former football players. Instead of asking the typical questions, the author asked a simple very focused question. What is the first thing you learned from Coach Bryant. All of the former players tell a similar story:
On the first day of football practice, Coach Bryant asked them one question. “Have you called your parents to thank them?” He then says, “None of you got here on your own. It required your parents to sacrifice many days taking you to little league practices, school, and feeding you and ensuring that you could play football and ultimately be on this team. None of us got here on our own and we will not win on our own.”
The message from coach Bryant was clear. You must have an ‘attitude of gratitude’ and realize we all need each other to get where we want to go.
Consequently, the millionaires in the study discussed within the book, “The Millionaire Mind”, agreed with coach Bryant’s assertion. To be successful and to successfully build wealth, you should have an ‘attitude of gratitude’.
Gratitude has two key components, according to Robert Emmons, Ph.D., Director, The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and perhaps the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude.
- “It’s an affirmation of goodness.” Gratitude permits you “to affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits” you’ve received.
- It “…recognizes that the sources of this goodness are outside of yourself … You acknowledge that other people—or even higher powers, if you’re of a spiritual mindset—gave you many gifts, big and small, to help you achieve the goodness in your life.”
The social dimension of gratitude is especially important. It requires you to see how you’ve been “supported and affirmed by other people”. In other words, the grateful person accepts all of life as a precious gift. It does not mean that everything that occurs in life is pleasant and good…bad things and problems will continue to occur in your life. Instead, it implies that we are grateful for both life’s problems (or challenges) and life’s blessings.
Because gratitude encourages us not only to appreciate gifts but to repay them (or pay them forward), the sociologist Georg Simmel called it “the moral memory of mankind.” This is how gratitude may have evolved: by strengthening bonds between members of the same species who mutually helped each other out.
Taking the time to feel gratitude can improve your wealth, health and emotional well-being by helping you cope with stress. Research suggests that a daily practice of gratitude could affect the body, too. For example, one study found that gratitude was linked to fewer signs of chronic inflammation and heart disease.
When life gets challenging, it can be difficult to focus on all the good things we have to be thankful for. Our brains are hardwired to consider the worst possible scenario and remember negative experiences to avoid pain and stay safe.
Gratitude is one way to counteract our natural bias towards negativity and to boost happiness and overall well-being.
The first step in any gratitude practice is to reflect on and appreciate the good things that have happened or are happening in your life. These can be big or little things. It can be as simple as finding a good parking space in your workplace garage or enjoying a cup of Starbucks coffee. Or, perhaps you feel grateful for a close friend’s unexpected cellphone call or compassionate support.
Next, allow yourself a moment to enjoy and appreciate that you had the positive experience, no matter what problems may exist in your life. Focus on and embrace the positive feelings of gratitude.
“We encourage people to try practicing gratitude daily,” advises Dr. Judith T. Moskowitz, a psychologist at Northwestern University. “You can try first thing in the morning or right before you fall asleep, whatever is best for you.”
When you make gratitude a regular habit, it can help you learn to recognize good things in your life despite the bad things and problems that might be happening.
The bottomline is to create positive emotions by being thankful and practicing gratitude every day by following these tips:
- Take a moment. Think about the positive things that happened during the day.
- Joy it Down in a Gratitude Journal. Make a habit of writing down things you’re grateful for. Try listing 3 to 5 things for thirty days.
- Savor and be thankful for your experiences. Try to notice positive moments as they are happening.
- Relive the good times. Relive positive moments later by thinking about them or sharing them with others.
- Write to someone. Write a letter to someone you feel thankful toward. You don’t have to send it.
- Make a visit. Tell someone you’re grateful for them in person.
In short, gratitude heals, energizes, and transforms lives, says Emmons. Religions and philosophies have long embraced gratitude as an indispensable manifestation of virtue, and an integral component of health, wholeness, and well-being.
References:
- Stanley, Ph.D, Thomas J., (August 2, 2001), The Millionaire Mind, Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing
- https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2019/03/practicing-gratitude
- https://selfdevelopmentaddict.com/2014/12/20/the-millionaire-mind-book-summarynotes/
- https://healthmatters.idaho.gov/an-attitude-of-gratitude/