Having written about how gratitude is the wellspring of creativity (Part 1) and completed a personal gratitude inventory (Part 2), in this final article on the gratitude series, I’m going to highlight some of the best ways to practice gratitude which are both science and personal experience backed. There are 3 core topics that will be covered here:
- Andrew Huberman’s podcast on gratitude
- Tamara Levitt’s gratitude masterclass on The Calm App
- Jodie Ettenberg’s article about when gratitude won’t work (and what will work instead)
Huberman’s Gratitude Podcast:
Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman has already done some heavy lifting on how gratitude can help us. His podcast in Nov 2021 on “The Science of Gratitude & How To Build A Gratitude Practice” is quite comprehensive for starters. Here is a quick summary about the most effective gratitude practices:
1. Why gratitude:
- Humans have great capacity for both happiness and sadness. There are prosocial behaviors (through which humans help others and themselves) and defensive behaviors (responses to threat) that we imbibe and fall prey to often and gratitude helps us get into the more helpful prosocial behaviors
- Gratitude helps to reduce inflammation as it helps us relax and puts as into a more stress-free/fearless mode.
2. How does gratitude help us:
- Serotonin is the key neurotransmitter involved with gratitude and it activates parts of the brain that are involved in setting up the context which help us experience our life more meaningfully and those which are involved in emotional circuitry
- Gratitude positively affects the areas of the brain that help you contextualize things. Thus, it helps you to see things from a broader context. The more you understand the reasoning behind why you want to do some hard things upfront for a benefit that’s going to manifest months or years later, the more wise you are about choosing the right things to do today.
3. What are the best ways to practice gratitude:
- Option 1 – Think about the stories of people who you resonate with the most. Podcasts, books and movies are a great place to start looking for real life examples.
- The stories of JK Rowling, Tommy Rivs, and some interesting humans I have met are quite helpful actually. Everytime I think about or reread my own words about them or when I read/listen to their own stories, I’m amazed how better I feel after that experience
- Option 2 – Think about a time you have received thanks. I have 3 anecdotes here. Just thinking about these things makes me feel better and realize the power of this option.
- Writing this made me think about my 12th std diary in which my friends and juniors have written about the myriad ways I have been a good friend or a mentor throughout the 4-7 years we were together.
- This February while calling to wish my friend on his birthday, he and another friend recalled how I was such a support to them in one of the most crucial points in their life.
- And when I switched jobs early this year, I received a deck thanking me for my contributions all these years. Couldn’t have received a better gift for my farewell.
Tamara’s Masterclass Resources:
- Being the head of mindfulness at the Calm, I’m quite amazed by how Tamara chose her masterclass to be about gratitude.
- In her masterclass, she outlines some good gratitude practices and typical barriers to gratitude. These don’t change you all of a sudden but do help when you stick with them.
Gratitude Practices:
- Letters to Self & Past Self – I used to be writing these letters on and off when I was young, but I understand how it helps. It’s like a pep talk you give to your own self.
- Journaling makes me look harder for the good things in my days and everytime I find something that gave me joy in spite of having an otherwise dull or mundane day
Barriers:
- Humans are wired for negativity. If our ancestors didn’t worry about animals that could kill them and take preventive measures, we wouldn’t be here today. However, it does take time to fix this wiring and to learn to use worry for the right things.
- Another key barrier is our expectations. Reducing my expectations has helped me become more objective and to see things for what they are and to take things as they come along. I relish this peace and balance more than the highs and lows driven by my over the roof expectations.
- Automaticity – For most of us, our childhood trauma and past life have left a lasting imprint on our behaviors. I still keep asking my own permission to enjoy some great experiences and doubt myself and ask if I deserve these. Being aware of this has helped me prevent myself from getting onto these vicious thinking loops
Jodi Ettenberg & situations when gratitude won’t work:
- As I have been thinking and writing about gratitude more deeply, I chanced upon a brilliant article. Below is the excerpt from Jodi’s CNN article (highly recommended reading) which explains how she came to terms with the unfairness of life through therapy after she was disabled by a lumbar puncture procedure in 2017 (when gratitude wasn’t helping):
- “Toxic positivity promises that gratitude is all you need. Losing my mobility taught me otherwise. Feeling general appreciation or gratitude does not fix everything when life unspools. Worse, when illness is involved, the insistence on gratitude can be alienating, and even cause harm. Patients feel castigated for not being “grateful enough.”
- Gratitude is an effective tool, one among many, when nurtured as a skill. It is not a panacea for pain. And when we jump straight to gratitude without first sitting in the mess of our present, we skip a very important step.
- I learned that what I needed initially was to process my anger and my loss. Striving to find beauty when I was in the thick of grief was akin to spiritual bypassing, thwarting my progress by camouflaging the mess. It was as if I were trying to pave over a pothole without first filling it in. The mess was still there.
- I found a grief therapist with experience in chronic pain, who helped me understand that my feelings of isolation and anger were normal. Through therapy, I came to terms with the maelstrom of my emotions, and moved through them to a more accepting place.
- I thought that I was already appreciative of the small things in life, but that was not enough. In the thick of it, I had to actively choose how I wanted to wake up each day, and who I wanted to be.
- This duality — an attention to granular details alongside the hard work of processing tragedy — provided me with a way through the melancholy of these last years.
- This article helped me look at gratitude’s usefulness (and the lack of it) in a very relatable way. I have been in helpless (not as severe) situations and felt gratitude was not helping. In those moments, instead of trying to feel grateful, just learning to process the grief and being okay with it seems to be a better life skill to have.
Conclusion:
With this, we come to the end of my first blog series on gratitude. I am glad I chose to write this because this process of reading, researching and putting it into words has made me a better human. I would be happy if this series of articles propelled any of you to start appreciating the good things in your live. As Oprah says, “when you appreciate the good in life, the good appreciates”
