Why Gratitude is More Important Than Ever
By: Annie Huang
Tags: 2020, Personal Development, Compassion, Mindset, Gratitude

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — Melody Beattie

I’ve been been thinking about gratitude a lot lately. 2020 has been a rocky ride for most of us, and it seems there’s little to be thankful about.

After all, why should we feel grateful for a year that started with widespread bushfires (here in Australia), followed by a global pandemic, lockdowns, racial injustice, and civil unrest?

However, it’s when we feel least grateful that we are most in need of gratitude. Why? It gives us perspective. It’s easy to get lost in our pain, believing that we are the only one suffering, or that nothing good at all came out of our experiences.

However, by shifting our perspective — even just a little — we can start to feel better about what we went through or are still going through. Our circumstances may remain the same, but we are transformed to a more positive place mentally, emotionally, and energetically.

Perspective, Perspective, Perspective

Just in case I didn’t make myself clear before, perspective is the key word here.

However, being grateful isn’t about being a hopeless optimist or a Pollyanna. It’s about being a realist. While optimists pay more attention to the positive than the negative and pessimists focus more on the negative than the positive, realists take into account both. They have the most balanced perspective.

Negativity Bias

As human beings, we are biased towards the negative. It’s known as the “negativity bias”. Our brains are hardwired to pay more attention and react more strongly to negative than to positive news.

Good evolutionary reasons exist for this negativity bias, as negative events — pain, illness, injury, or even death — are much more costly in survival terms than positive events.

Therefore, when we’re going through a rough patch — individually or collectively — we need to work on shifting our perspective intentionally to take in the good, rather than focusing exclusively on the bad.

And gratitude is one of the quickest, easiest, and most powerful tools to help us do that. It allows us to see that something good that came out of our negative experiences.

Seeing Our Common Humanity

Another reason that we need gratitude more than ever is that being thankful promotes many other pro-social qualities — such as compassion, kindness, and generosity — towards ourselves and others.

And that’s exactly what we need in difficult and uncertain times like these. Rather of racing to the bottom, we rise to the top.

According to Dr Kristin Neff, a world-leading researcher on self-compassion, there are three key elements to self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.

What’s most relevant here is the element of common humanity. As human beings, we are imperfect and prone to making mistakes. By focusing on the common humanity that connects us all rather than the differences that divide us, we feel we are not alone and our struggles are universal struggles.

In other words, everyone suffers, not just us. It then becomes easier to let go and accept ourselves and our situation as it is.

Pro-Social, Rather than Anti-Social

It gives us not only a broader perspective — yes, there’s the word again! — but also allows us to feel normal. It gives us permission to be ourselves, warts and all. We become more compassionate towards ourselves and other perfectly imperfect beings.

In addition to promoting compassion and kindness by focusing on our common humanity, gratitude also promotes generosity towards others.

Think about it, when we feel that we have enough and that our cup is full (or even overflows), then it becomes a lot easier to share what we have with others, no matter how little we have.

Try This Fun Gratitude Exercise

It’s a creative take on the regular gratitude exercise of writing down three things that we’re grateful for every day. I started out doing the regular exercise and it definitely helped, but I also got bored with it after a few months. So I came up with this exercise instead.

It’s basically going through the alphabet (A-Z), and think of a word that starts with each letter and what you’re grateful for about it. It can be anything or anyone.

For example, maybe A is for Apple and you’re thankful for the apple that you ate today, or the wonderful fact that you’re Alive. Or maybe it’s a person in your life whose name starts with A and you’re grateful for that person.

Getting Creative

Often I find I get into a theme without meaning to do it. For example, I went out for a walk when it was raining yesterday. And, surprise, surprise I came up with all the words that had to do with the rain. Apart from the obvious — R was for rain — G was for green (everything looked so green and lush), N was for nature (well, I was walking in nature), U was for umbrella (I was carrying one), and so on.

You can do this any time you want, and it only take a couple of minutes when you get familiar with it. I usually do it when I go for my daily walks, or when I’m in a funk and need something uplifting quickly.

One important note I would add is to stop for at least a few seconds after each word and really feel the feeling of gratitude and appreciation, rather than just rattling off a list of words quickly. The longer you stay with the feeling, the more you’ll get out of this exercise. Try it today!

Turning What We Have into Enough

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey

Being grateful in times like these isn’t easy. But it’s when we least feel thankful that we are most in need of what gratitude can give us: perspective. It transforms our lives by turning what we have into enough, and more.

And by focusing on our common humanity instead of what divides us, we can rise above our circumstances and become someone we’re proud of — more compassionate, kinder, and more generous.