Take The Stress Out Of Gratitude
How I defeated the anxiety-inducing pressure to feel it.
I struggled for a long time with the pressure of establishing what would make me happy. And what I didn’t realise is that happiness is a state of mind that the human race might be born with the capacity of having, but mostly, it is nurtured over time, exercised profusely, and learned — from within. “Whatever that means,” I used to say.
The books say you start with gratitude.
You start by listing the things you are thankful for. Everything good in your life. Your two eyes, your two feet, the air you breathe. You’re supposed to start feeling the joy from being thankful until your average state of mind is raised.
But it is never-ending — gratitude is to be included in your daily routine, like saying please and thank you or like brushing your teeth — except you must genuinely feel joy when you’re thankful. Frankly, this disappointed me.
The secret is that the more you’re thankful for, the more you will attract. But it takes a lot of effort.
In fact, this concept stressed me out. How come I had not done this before? I’ve always had a lot of stuff, and I’ve always worked towards achieving goals, but how come I had not felt the utter joy from gratitude before? How was I supposed to start from scratch, at the age of 30, and just be happy for it all now?
Suddenly I had given myself a lot of pressure to prove the books right — gratitude would save me. But with this pressure to overcome my pessimistic tendencies came the feeling of failure before I had even set out a plan.
I was stuck.
The Disappointing Truth About Happiness
People, in general, tend to think about the things that they want in life and the goals that they want to work towards to arrive at a state of a happily ever after without knowing what that entails.
Many hold the achievements accountable for their happiness and are then disappointed when the feeling of joy doesn’t come, or when it doesn't last long enough.
We seem to be continuously chasing that feeling, but we don’t saviour it once it is caught.
And the cycle continues if nothing is done about it.
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” — Socrates
This is the cycle I was in.
Understanding How Gratitude Works
People depend on other things to make them happy. And to be fair, things do and can bring happiness to some extent. If one works hard and achieves a goal, he feels a buzz for a certain amount of time before he goes about working towards another goal. The thing one must do in order to feel good is to simply remind themselves of that buzz they once felt, and feel it again, and again, and again.
Feeling good is not just a feeling that comes naturally to those who do not feel it all the time. It is a feeling that needs practice like any other habit or exercise.
Practising gratitude is supposedly easy once it is done often, like with any other habit.
Building a routine around simply listing the things you are grateful for every day as well as actively showing your gratitude towards others can bring a sense of peace to you and a feel-good vibe.
That is why it is essential to practice it often, especially during challenging times — to remind yourself of what is important —because apparently, it is that easy.
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” — Epictetus
If it is that simple, why isn't everyone practising it?
Well, there is too much for me to get into in this article about capitalism, advertising, and money, but ultimately, we are all taught, mostly in the Western world, from a very early age to speak of the principles of minimalism but practice the very opposite. We spoil our children and tell them they can have the world. We condition them to want everything without focusing enough attention on what they have now.
In other words, we learn to live in the future. We learn to constantly chase.
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
Taking The Stress Out of Gratitude
The lesson was for me to live in the present.
When I gave gratitude a genuine try for the first time, I remember I started looking at my phone. I remembered how much I had wanted it and how I felt when I got it. I was excited.
I looked over at my mirror, over 10 years old — a gift from my parents when I left home for university. I felt a pang of joy to think something could survive all the moves and fit into every room it has been in. Never in my life did I think I would feel appreciation for a mirror before, and this mirror isn’t grand. But it became sentimental at that moment.
The mirror reflected an exhausted-looking me. But at the time I had awesome hair. One good thing that comes out of pregnancy and childbirth (other than the obvious baby) is that women don’t lose as much hair for a few months, making it look super voluminous before it begins falling out once the hormones stabilise. I was tired as hell but my hair was on point.
I looked at my son — a baby at the time, and felt this overwhelming joy. Of course, I had felt joy by looking at my son before, but I used to let the feelings come to me. This time, I was looking at him to feel joy deliberately. How my biggest dream of all was to become a mother, to nurture and to love a child, and how it had come true.
When you look at things on purpose and pay attention to them, it is hard not to notice the feeling of gratitude in you.
I was learning how to make myself feel thankful. Suddenly, I was relieved — I knew how to spark a little joy within myself.
I could use this feeling every day.
I could use this feeling all the damn time if I pleased.
I felt free at the fact that suddenly I knew what it meant to own my own mind. I thought about my feelings and how I chose them, and I decided in that moment that I would choose joy above all else, and live with purpose. Getting into the habit of feeling thankful was the way to my version of happily ever after. Because we are all in the happily ever after stage in our lives from the moment we are born. We just have to know it.
Gratitude would be my way through the journey with no destination, for the journey is the destination.
A Few Benefits to Practising Gratitude
My story aside, gratitude has many benefits which can help boost your overall feeling of happiness and bring about a more constant and balanced sense of fulfilment.
Gratitude looks after your mental health.
Gratitude helped me to reduce my feelings of stress and worry by bringing me a sense of tranquillity. When I feel anxious, I start to list the things I feel thankful for, and I start feeling that joy from my gratefulness, the negative feelings almost vanish. When I feel mentally good, I improve my problem-solving skills and focus more clearly on fulfilling my goals.
Likewise, the cultivation of a sense of gratitude can help to alleviate the mental strains of a traumatic event and build resilience.
A 2003 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that gratitude was a major contributor to resilience following the terrorist attacks on September 11. — Forbes
It can help reduce the typical negative feelings of self-doubt, anger, and anxiety also.
Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., a leading gratitude researcher, has conducted multiple studies on the link between gratitude and well-being. His research confirms that gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. — Forbes
Exercising gratitude especially when you feel down can reduce the overwhelming feeling of an issue and help you gain perspective.
This is the biggest lesson of all for me.
I used to dwell on issues so much I would let them consume me to the point of anxiety. And then my husband would ask me,
“What are you gonna do about it?”
Before, I used to hate him a little bit for ruining my state of misery.
After I started using gratitude, however, the game changed. His question now ignites a sense of determination in me not to let anxiety get to me. He triggers the plan of action to use gratitude to get out of feeling any kind of negativity.
And then I can focus on being constructive rather than destructive with my issue.
In the same way that when I look at my son and feel unconditional joy, even when I’m sad, I look at my other “blessings” and feel it. My happy bar is high, but when it is not, gratitude helps boost it.
Look for a silver lining and be grateful for it when times are tough, for there always is one.
“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” — Buddha
When you compare the issue at hand with all the things that you are grateful for, the very thing that is weighing you down seems to lose its weight. You gain perspective and the anxious mind is replaced with a more objective attitude aimed at problem-solving rather than dwelling.
Gratitude looks after your physical health.
When you feel grateful for your two arms, your two legs, your two eyes, your ability to breathe healthily, and everything else your body can actually do, you start treating it with a lot more respect. You start to consume healthier foods overall and you start to want to exercise.
Your feelings of gratitude only motivate you more to maintain and grow the physical strength of your body. Focus on the goodness of your body and you will achieve otherwise seemingly impossible results.
A 2010 study published in Clinical Psychology Review4 linked gratitude to everything from improved psychological well-being to better physical health. Grateful people tend to sleep better and even live longer. — Verywellmind.org
Gratitude looks after your goals.
Focusing on how grateful you are about your achieved goals helps you feel that joy for goals that are unachieved and makes you more determined to reach them.
“A grateful mind is a great mind which eventually attracts to itself great things.’ — Plato
When you’re more determined, your creativity expands, and your ability to see opportunities increases. You will go about different ways of achieving your goals and you will learn many things along the way.
Visualise your goals, write them down, remind yourself to look at them, but most of all, feel that joy you would feel when you reach them and feel the joy from the goals you have already achieved. The immense feeling of gratitude will empower you and make you feel on top of the world.
I live in the space of thankfulness — and for that, I have been rewarded a million times over. I started out giving thanks for small things, and the more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased. That’s because — for sure — what you focus on expands. When you focus on the goodness in life, you create more of it. — Oprah
Gratitude looks after your relationships.
Has anyone ever made your day with a thank-you note stuck to your computer screen at work?
The person who thanked you increased their own feelings of gratitude by writing that note to you. If you feel good, they probably feel twice as good.
Research has shown that gratitude helps us to initiate, maintain, and strengthen our relationships. Gratitude may make our romantic relationships closer and more satisfying, encourage us to feel more invested in friendships, and even cause us to be more helpful coworkers. — Greater Good Magazine
Actively thanking others for anything they have done exponentially grows everyone’s overall feeling of gratitude. Spread the love with a heartfelt thank you to someone every day and watch your relationships deepen, especially the one with yourself.
Takeaway
Gratitude helped me to gain perspective on what is really important to me. It helped me establish what I wanted to do with life and how to be happy for my life as it was. I began to see the joy in the things we normally take for granted.
The best thing about practising gratitude is that there are no disadvantages to it. And the likelihood of it affecting you in a good way is extremely high. There is simply no reason why not to make the concerted effort to include it in your life.
Let gratitude look after you mentally and physically. Focus on the gratitude for your achieved goals to reach new ones. Begin to feel deliberately thankful towards everything and everyone in your life and watch your joy grow, in the cheesiest way possible.
Go get ‘em.
Sylvia Emokpae, thinker and philosopher, is passionate about self-love, motherhood, and pro-race. See more work like this.
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