Cultivating Gratitude: From Dissatisfaction To Contentment
How cultivating gratitude might be transformative but difficult to practice, and you’re not alone.
We spend so much of our energy focusing on what we want—the things we don’t have.
Finding gratitude shifts our perception towards the abundance of gifts and blessings present for us at any given moment. Especially during hard times, a moment of gratitude can remind us of what we’ve been given: love, support, simple pleasures, material resources, our health and safety, this breath, this moment, and this life.
To take it a step further, we can give thanks not only for the good things in our lives but for the challenges and difficulties that push us to grow and allow us to put our spiritual work into practice.
“We should be especially grateful for having to deal with annoying people and difficult situations because, without them, we would have nothing to work with,” writes Acharya Judy Lief. “Without them, how could we practice patience, exertion, mindfulness, loving-kindness or compassion?”
But this is not an easy thing to do. In a podcast and interview with Michael Bergeisen (2010) for “The Greater Good Podcast”, psychologist Rick Hanson explains why this might be and how, through an evolutionary process, we have developed a negativity bias because this might have aided our chances of survival in the past. He famously wrote the following, which he is quoted for many times how the,
“Brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.” (Hanson, 2009, ch. 2)
In the following video, Rick Hanson talks more about this.
So, leading on from what Rick Hanson proposes, we could say, as Nisker (2022) wrote in their book “Being Nature” that,
“Dissatisfaction appears to be built into the human condition, and although that may sound cruel, it is apparently in the best interest of our survival. The brain maintains a certain degree of unease running continually, keeping us monitoring the world for some advantage or danger, always a little on edge and ready for action.” (ch. 6, para. 25)
Within the sphere of evolutionary psychology, this has become known as the smoke detector principle (Nesse, 2005). Below is a video by Professor Randolph Nesse, the person who proposed the smoke detector principle, where he explains more about this, how they discovered it and why they named it so.
To reflect on all of this, we could use the following example - Let us say that during your day, you experience multiple positive things to be grateful for, but you go shopping and while checking out at the supermarket, the moment you lift your shopping bag the bottom breaks and all the shopping falls to the floor making a mess. Which one tends to stick with us till the end of the day, the positive experiences or that one negative one? As Hanson (2009) explains, most of the time, it is the negative one.
I see this in my life - how positive things seem to pass by while negative things seem to stick in my mind. This is why practising gratitude is one of my favourite practices, and I do it every day.
A simple way to practice this is a practice we introduce in the first session of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Life (MBCT-L) called the “Ten Finger Gratitude Practice,” which we invite participants to do at the end of the day. A practice where we ask participants to bring to mind, one after the other, ten things they are grateful for, counting them on their fingers while opening and savouring any pleasant sensations that arise in the body while doing this. Below is a video by Dr. Amber Lyda, where she gives some background and context to this practice.
And when I do this, I find I am able to see all the small ways in which I have been blessed during the day. It also makes me feel more grounded and less anxious in life. This expression of gratitude also helps me stay connected to myself and others; it reminds me that most of the time, everything I need is already inside and around me; I just need to open up to it.
Gratitude practice helps me do this, and I find this very helpful in moments of difficulty because it helps me see and be grateful for the resources at hand at that moment that can help with that difficulty, helping me to move forward with greater clarity and confidence in such situations.
However, some days are harder than others to find something we could express gratitude for. This is also true for myself. In moments like these, what I find helpful is starting with being grateful for small things.
Starting by being grateful for small things could be as simple as being grateful and giving thanks for your morning cup of coffee. This can be enough. As Hanson (2009) points out, by taking in the good, even if small things, with time, we might start to notice a shift in perspective that can have the potential to change our outlook on life. Why? Because as Hanson (2009) explains, we start training our mind to recognise and become more aware of the good things around us, so things to be grateful for no longer just pass us by, whereby we might begin to recognise that there is always something to be grateful for. This will help balance that automatic innate negativity bias present in the mind, which can bring with it a sense of well-being. In the following video, Dr Rick Hanson talks about a three-step gratitude exercise for taking in the good.
But the question you might be asking is, is this hogwash? Does practising this have benefits? Yes, current research seems to indicate so. Meta-analysis of research studies on gratitude indicate that practising gratitude can benefit our well-being, including improved mood, better sleep, increased optimism, decreased stress, reduced depression, stronger relationships, and lower blood pressure, while some also argue that the practice of gratitude has the potential to reduce inflammation, strengthen the immune system, improve digestion and increase energy levels (Cregg & Cheavens, 2021; Davis et al., 2006; Dickens, 2017; Ma, Tunney, & Ferguson, 2017).
And yet, although practising gratitude might benefit us, we might still struggle to cultivate gratitude or practice gratitude towards others as we might believe that this would not make any difference in the world. When thoughts like this cross my mind, I always remember the following phrase from an African proverb once quoted by the Dalai Lama which says,
“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito.”
Further gratitude is not about changing who we are; it’s about seeing ourselves and others with different eyes. Why? Because gratitude is about opening our eyes to what is already there to focus on what we have and learn how to savour and appreciate rather than gloss over it. This includes the people around us. It starts showing us that no one is an island and that we are all connected. How?
At the individual level, no one is an island. We all have a group of very close individuals whom we depend on in difficult and happy times or vice versa. At the community level, we all need each other, the bus driver, the shopkeeper etc. And at the global level we are linked and intertwined together in ways we can’t even imagine. For example, reflect on this analogy; probably in the making of our TV set, some contribution was made on the other side of the world from a particular person, and if that person did not wake up that day, our TV set would not be there.
Furthermore, reflect on the immensity of the universe where there is only one place we call home, EARTH. A one of a kind, majestic place which humbly provides us with all that we need for our survival. And yet, it seems that many times, all of this passes us by.
This is what contemplative traditions and practices teach us: the principle of interdependence (Armstrong, 2011). One contemplative tradition that puts a strong emphasis on this is Buddhism and considered to be one of the foundational doctrinal principles of mindfulness practice (Anālayo, 2021).
So, gratitude opens our eyes to this, to the light within ourselves and those around us and the potential impact that each and every one of us has through our daily actions on those around us and the world at large. If used wisely, this awareness can give each of us the power to change our lives and the world, helping to create a kinder, more compassionate world. As Albert Einstein once commented,
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the world of nature in its beauty.” (as cited in Struhl, 2018, p. 110)
I would say that we might adopt three steps to do this and to cultivate more gratitude in our lives and start to help create a kinder, compassionate world: 1) Become aware of the good things in our life; 2) See the goodness in others; 3) Taking kind, compassionate action.
Becoming Aware
As we already pointed out getting caught up in the daily hustle and bustle can be easy. Our minds tend to race, and we lose sight of the little things that bring us joy. So, it’s essential to take time each day to remember what matters most to us. I like to say to myself that one of the first steps to practising gratitude is mindfulness. That is becoming aware of the good things that happen to us in life, maybe by doing the ten-finger gratitude practice we mentioned before
Here are some questions we might ask ourselves to help us identify the good things in our lives which we might express gratitude for:
• What brings you happiness?
• Who makes you smile?
• What makes you laugh?
• What inspires you?
• What fills your heart with peace?
• What gives you hope?
• What excites you?
• What gives you purpose?
And when you look at your answers, ask yourself why they matter. Why are they so special? How do they impact your life?
Seeing the Good in Others
In order to truly appreciate the good things in our lives, we must also learn to see the good in others. To do this, we need to slow down and pay attention, to see the person. I like to use the following example to illustrate this.
When I was young, I used to play hide and seek with my friends. One day, I hid under a tree and waited patiently for someone to come and find me. After a long wait, I heard footsteps approaching. A few moments later, one of my friends emerged from behind the trunk, his face lit up with excitement.
“I found you!” he said.
“You did?” I replied.
He nodded. “Yes! Look, I’m right here.”
Then, he pointed to the ground next to him. There was no sign of me.
“Where am I?” I asked.
He looked puzzled. “Oh, you’re not there,” he said. “I saw where you were hiding, but you weren’t actually there. You were somewhere else entirely.”
That’s how we often view other people. We see the outside, but we miss the real person underneath. We assume we know what another person is thinking or feeling. Or worse, we judge them based on our assumptions.
But what if we stopped making snap judgments and started asking questions instead? What if we took the time to understand the perspectives of others before we made a judgment?
Instead of assuming that everyone thinks or feels the same way we do, we can open our hearts and minds to new possibilities. We can listen and empathise. When we do this, we might discover that the people around us are more complex than we thought. Maybe they, too, like us, are going through difficulties and wish to be free from them. We might discover that difficulties are part of life, our common humanity that unites us rather than separating us and being grateful for each other.
Taking Action
Once we’ve become aware of the good in our lives and others, we can take action.
One of the easiest ways to show gratitude is to say thank you, especially to those people we interact with regularly. It doesn’t take much effort, but a genuine, simple thank you sometimes can go a long way.
Another option is to express your gratitude through acts of service. For example, volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter if you are grateful for your family. If you’re grateful for nature, plant trees or clean up litter along the shoreline.
Finally, we can share our gratitude for others by acknowledging their presence in our lives and telling someone what they mean to us.
So, we can end by saying that gratitude is a powerful tool both for our own well-being and the well-being of others. It has the ability to transform our lives, as well as the lives of those around us. And it just takes a moment, and you can practice it right now, being grateful for this moment, this breath right now. As Wes Nisker (2022) put it,
“We may discover that ancient conditioning rather than present circumstances is causing our dissatisfaction, and that this moment is quite sufficient or even wonderful, and we simply hadn’t noticed.” (ch. 6, para. 30)
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Disclaimer: This article is an updated and expanded version of an article I had previously written.
References
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