Most of us will express some form of thanks on Thursday, thanking hosts or companions for food and company or thanking companions for celebrating with us.  It’s helpful to have a day set aside to remember gratitude and rituals in place to express it.

What about the other days?  The gurus, whether entrepreneurial or spiritual, tell us that gratitude is a hallmark of fulfillment.  It’s hard to disagree with this wisdom, but it’s also hard to do anything with it.  Gratitude, as commonly defined, is a state of being—an emotion.  In any given moment you feel it or you don’t.  So is fulfillment available only to those who are naturally disposed toward feeling grateful, as happiness is available to those who are naturally disposed toward feeling happy?  Not fair.

And not true.  You can’t force yourself to feel gratitude, but you can force yourself to practice gratitude.  And practicing gratitude actually does lead to feeling grateful, in time. 

(I am told the same is true of exercise.  My excuse for lack of exercise is that it doesn’t feel good, and that I’d do it more often if it did.  Healthier and smarter people than I tell me that I need to go through the motions regardless of how it feels—and that eventually practice will lead to feeling will lead to actually craving exercise.)

Start today.  Practicing gratitude is easy in that it takes up very little of your time (let’s say 10 minutes a day) and requires only a writing or recording device.  It’s difficult for those of us who are out of the practice because it feels unnatural, silly, or stupid at first—pointless.  I promise you, there is a point.  It could be a week or six months from now, but there is a point at which practice begets genuine feeling.  And genuine feeling tends to demand expression.

To practice gratitude, simply start by making a list, once a day, of a handful of things you could be grateful for.  My lists were pretty lame, when I first started doing this.  In searching for things that a grateful-feeling person would be grateful for, I found I had to begin with things I didn’t have, as in, “I’m grateful no one ever abused me, I’m grateful I don’t have any broken bones or missing limbs…”  It took me a little while to start coming at it from the other end, “I’m grateful to have all of my limbs, I’m grateful to be able to see.”  And a while after that when I asked myself why I was grateful for eyesight anyway, I could discover, “I’m grateful for sunlight, I’m grateful for the color red, and kids smiling.” 

At some point making gratitude lists became easy, and the hard part became having this full-to-bursting feeling of gratitude and nothing to do with it.  That’s when I started writing letters and making phone calls and toasts to make sure that people who generated my gratitude received my thanks.  People aren’t too surprised to receive thank you notes when they’ve sent you a gift, but they don’t expect to get gratitude notes for their great sense of humor.  You’ll make some people feel shy with your expressions of gratitude, but keep it short and sweet and private for the people who need it that way and you’ll find willing recipients.

You’ll have to get creative about how to express gratitude for things of nature or circumstance.  If you’re grateful for trees or for your innate talent in math, thanking your sister might not be the most satisfying way to express it.  That’s when you thank your higher power, if you’ve got one.  And if you can’t express thanks, you give back—you plant a tree or tutor someone in math or write a poem.

But that’s for later.  For now, just phone it in, fake it ’til ya make it—-write down five things that you “should” be grateful for, and write down six tomorrow.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks

Tags: Advice, Happiness, Opinion

Posted in Blog, Guest Writers, Life of Meaning, Opinion