Thanks for the day, thanks for the night: How to practice gratitude
MEDITATION ALREADY LEFT PERCEIVED as an exclusively religious practice: many treat it as an attention concentration training, a way to relax and distract from anxious thoughts. But meditation is not the only way to calm down and understand yourself. More and more people (among them, for example, Oprah Winfrey and Arianna Huffington) are choosing the practice of gratitude today - telling what it is and why they are for us.
What are gratitude practices and why are they needed?
As you have probably already guessed, the purpose of the gratitude practitioner is to pay attention not only to negative events around, but also to joyful ones. In reality, it is always more difficult than it seems: you probably noticed that the uninvited comments about the appearance are remembered much faster than the compliments of pleasant people.
Practitioners of gratitude do not call at all to ignore negative emotions and drive them deeper, replacing them with joy. Scientists do not get tired of reminding that emotions, even unpleasant ones, are necessary - they help us communicate with other people, realize that something important is happening to us, and react to events around us. Moreover, there are no “bad” and “good” emotions - this is a difficult way to perceive reality, and it is simply impossible to “disconnect” or stop perceiving one of them. Practitioners of gratitude do not squeeze out negative moments from your life, but should help to see a more complete picture, act calmer and more balanced even in moments of crisis. They generally allow you to take a fresh look at troubles and dramas - although this, of course, does not mean that you have to rejoice when something bad happens in life, or to stop defending your interests.
Gratitude gives us additional resources: in difficult times, we can remember what is good in our lives and rely on it
Gratitude does not have to touch global things - after all, big joys and changes happen less often. The point is to notice the pleasant little things and pay attention to them: enjoy the warm weather, a tasty dinner and meeting with friends, and not just long-awaited vacation or increase. In addition, it helps to see what brings you joy and what you would like in your life more - and what you would be ready to give up painlessly.
Scientists support this approach. Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology at the University of California and the author of several books on gratitude, conducted one of his first studies on the topic back in 2003. Participants were divided into three groups: the first was asked to describe feelings and emotions about failures, the second - to concentrate on successes, the third - to describe neutral events from life. The group, which concentrated on the positive aspects, began to feel better after the start of the experiment. Robert Emmons believes that gratitude gives us additional resources: in difficult moments, we can remember that there is good in our lives and rely on it.
What are the practices of gratitude
Perhaps the most famous and easiest way to introduce gratitude into your life is to have a special diary. There are no hard and fast rules as it should be. You can write once a day, once a week or a month, if it is difficult for you to think out every day that you are grateful for. There is no special uniform form for entries either: you can make a beautiful notebook for the diary and write pages in a special way, you can restrict yourself to a stack of white sheets.
A typical scheme for completing such a diary is to regularly compile a list of five to ten things that you are glad to have. But this is not necessary: if you want, nothing prevents you from detailing how exactly this or that event pleased you. For what exactly to be grateful, everyone decides for himself too. Someone is pleased to recall the "big" things - for example, that your loved ones do not get sick, that they have the opportunity to do their favorite work and not be in trouble. Others find it easier to remember five to ten little things every day: an unported deadline, a meeting with a friend, a good TV series, or delicious coffee bought on the way to work. Instead of writing more, it is better to strive to do it frankly: a modest list that contains what is really important to you will please more than a long list of common things that do not mean anything to you. You can simply restrict one general list instead of daily entries - and return to it when you feel the need. Writing in the morning or in the evening is also not important (studies do not say which approach is more effective): it is easier for someone to do it before going to bed to sum up the day, to someone before breakfast, in order to get a good mood in the morning.
You can write a letter "to the table" of a celebrity whose story inspires you, or a friend who once helped you through a difficult period.
To help those who do not know how to approach the diary, special applications will come - from simple ones like What are you Grateful for ?, where you have to answer the question once a day, to a little more complicated ones Grateful: A Gratitude Journal or KYO: in them there are suggestive questions like “What made me smile today?” and also the ability to add photos to remember the moment. You can use the The Gratitude Jar website (that is, the “Bank of Gratitude”) - here the records of different users appear in a common virtual bank: you can not only watch your own, but also find out what others are writing, and maybe find something in it for myself.
For those who do not like writing practice, there is another option: the diary can be replaced with a morning or evening ritual of gratitude. It is not at all as scary as it sounds - it is enough just to remember in the morning or before going to bed that something pleasant happened to you during the day and for which you can be grateful. Speaking it out loud is not necessary - you can just think.
How to practice gratitude in everyday life?
The practice of gratitude is not limited to written or oral rituals: there are several effective techniques that help to experience gratitude more often in ordinary life. One of them is to say more thanks to those to whom you are grateful for something: friends, family and friends. This is not only about thanking people when they do something pleasant to you (although this is a good thing that we often forget about), but also, for example, tell your loved ones how they are dear to you or how they inspire you surely in your life there are those who you have long wanted to say it. Ideas can be spied on, for example, on Unstuck psychological support site cards. The practice can be extended to those with whom you do not know personally or with whom you have lost contact: nothing prevents you from writing a letter "to the table" of a celebrity whose history inspires you, or a friend who once helped you survive a difficult period.
In addition, gratitude can help to endure difficulties more easily (although, of course, it will not replace a trip to a psychotherapist). Again, this does not mean that you need to “block” negative emotions - instead think about what experience you have gained, what you have learned and what new things have revealed in yourself. Many in the past have an unpleasant situation that has made you who you are today.
Finally, if you want to introduce gratitude into your life smoothly and gradually, you can arrange a challenge and perform tasks related to gratitude in a few days. Look, for example, at the assignments of Janice Kaplan, the author of "The Gratitude Diaries": for seven days you are invited to thank your loved ones for simple deeds and actions, isolate the positive in an unpleasant situation, make a donation or offer someone free help and much more. For a week you will be able to understand which techniques and techniques of gratitude please you, and which ones do not suit you at all - it will be easier to act further. It remains only to start.
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