Taking time to smell the roses

Making the time and space for gratitude – and what it can do for your whole being.

There is a lot to be said about creating a gratitude practice. Barbara Friedrickson, in her 2009 book Positivity says:

 “Gratitude opens up your heart and carries the urge to give back – to do something good in return, either for the person who helped you or for someone else. Gratitude, though, has an evil twin: indebtedness. If you feel you have to pay someone back, then you’re not feeling grateful, you’re feeling indebted, which often feels distinctly unpleasant. Indebtedness pays back begrudgingly, as part of the economy of favours. In contrast, gratitude gives back freely and creatively. It’s a truly pleasant feeling intermixed with joy and heartfelt appreciation.”

One of her 10 forms of positivity, Friedrickson suggests that by cultivating more positive emotion in our lives, we open up, like a flower in bloom. We stretch towards the light instinctively; and, as we stretch towards positivity, she argues we stretch our minds open to new and broader ways of seeing the world. It allows for greater creative thinking and for us to notice more opportunities available to us.

Positivity - research shows - also enables growth, and allows us to build good mental habits, stronger social connections and physical health for a start.

Gratitude Practice

One of the ways to broaden and build our minds is to cultivate a gratitude practice. It’s not something I have found easy – not because I am an ungrateful person – but because when things feel basically OK – what’s the point? And when I’m feeling bad or low, forcing myself to feel grateful can be associated with degrees of guilt (for feeling bad in the first place).

And anyway, listing all the things that I feel grateful for feels nice temporarily, but can feel a bit like a check list and one without much oomph. The feelings are fleeting.

So what’s the point – and what’s the best way to cultivate gratitude effectively?

Gratitude – the point

In its simplest form, developing gratitude in general can have a ripple effect that means we go beyond positive feeling for the specific thing or person we feel grateful towards in the moment. Creating a regular gratitude practice has a cumulative effect, meaning we seek out and notice reasons to be grateful automatically and more widely.

It is because as we practice gratitude – even for a minute or so a day - we are rewiring our brains. This happens in the ‘prosocial’ circuits in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain for making meaning and generating context for our lives. It helps us carve out identity and a sense of self and is responsible for how we relate to other people.

So the right gratitude practice, practiced regularly and frequently, can enhance many aspects of our physical and mental health by default. It is, as they say, a no-brainer. It can help us shift perspective and change our outlook on the world.

The right kind of gratitude

This physiological change (this rewiring of the brain) however, only happens in certain conditions. It does not, sadly, occur if we simply list the things we are grateful for and reflect on what they bring to us. This kind of thinking might feel temporarily nice but does not create long term change and the kind of generalised positivity described by Barbara Friedrickson above.

In fact, research shows that gratitude is not even cultivated fully, with long lasting positive effects, by expressing thanks alone.

Instead, studies by Damasio and others show that gratitude is most beneficially cultivated when we receive thanks, rather than give them. When we notice and reinforce the feelings that are generated by someone sharing their gratitude towards us, it not only creates a greater positive state in ourselves, but increases the likelihood of us doing something that would encourage gratitude from others.

But its hard to manufacture genuine gratitude towards us from other people! We can’t force the issue, after all… 

An effective gratitude practice

Outlined by Andrew Huberman in his podcast episode ‘The Science of gratitude and how to build a gratitude practice’, the best kinds of gratitude practice are surprisingly more about you than they are about other people.

And specifically, the best practices are more about how you feel when someone is grateful for something you do – or the emotions that are generated when you simply observe someone expressing their gratitude to someone else.

Interestingly, the same positive results can occur simply by hearing stories about grateful exchanges performed between other people, in other places, totally strange and unconnected to you.

When prosocial behaviour is described as part of a story – one where the grateful emotions of people (yours or other people’s) are clearly defined – the neural pathways in our own prosocial circuitry are activated and the serotonin and oxytocin hormones are released just as well.

What we need to know is that receiving gratitude is powerful – more powerful than simply expressing gratitude itself. And our brains are hardwired for stories, ones that generate emotions and physiological responses that we can connect to.

Here is Huberman’s recommendation of an effective gratitude practice, based on this evidence and research:

1.     Choose a story that contains in it either

a.     An occasion where someone expressed genuine gratitude for something you had done for them

b.     Or a meaningful story where an exchange of genuine gratitude is well documented – both in terms of what happened, and how both parties felt as a result of that exchange

2.     Write bullet point notes to detail this story in terms of:

·      what the initial struggle was

·      What the help was

·      What the emotional impact is on them (the person expressing thanks)

·      What the emotional impact is on you (or the person receiving thanks)

3.     Remind yourself of this story, repeatedly. Ideally, remind yourself by focusing on the story for between 1 and 5 minutes, 3 or more times a week, for three weeks. 5-minutes focus might include some initial breathing exercises to help activate the ‘rest and digest’ parasympathetic nervous system and enable you to feel and sense the associated emotions more intensely. Reminding yourself of this story will not just affect your brain circuitry, but your breath and heart rate too. Any opportunity to slow down and notice is beneficial.

4.     Ensure the gratitude is genuine – and not indebtedness, or in some way manufactured or false.

5.     Ensure the gratitude is embedded within a meaningful story, one that provides the context of the exchange. This creates a richer template of meaning and emotion.

To find out more about the neurobiology and science of Gratitude, listen to Andrew Huberman’s podcast episode below.

And start thinking of those stories where you have felt the gratitude of someone else and how you changed their life (however slightly). It might just change yours!