The Importance of Gratitude and Gladness for a Happy Life

01 Nov The Importance of Gratitude and Gladness for a Happy Life

Posted at 14:04h in Blog by

Gratitude and Gladness

Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness about something you have been given. Gladness is a more general sense of feeling pleased, rewarded, delighted, or happy about something, without it necessarily being a gift. Much of the time these two sweet feelings form a blend, so we’ll explore them together here. Gratitude, gladness, and related feelings like appreciation may seem so homey and Hallmark cardish that they’re easy to dismiss, but studies in fact show that cultivating them has lasting and important benefits, including lifting your mood, increasing satisfaction with life, and building resilience.

Technically, taking in the good is the deliberate internalization of positive experience in implicit memory.  It involves four simple steps:

H Notice feelings of gratitude or gladness that are already present in your mind. Perhaps there is a background sense of being glad about where you live, or you’re pleased that your child is in a good mood today. As you go about your day, be particularly attentive to any feelings of gratitude or gladness that naturally arise. Also create an experience of gratitude or gladness by look- ing for things to feel grateful for or glad about. They could be seemingly small or simple. Perhaps something nice happened recently, or you have enough food, or you have a friend who likes you. You could feel grateful for a pet, flowers blooming, good fortune, helping hands, or the gift of life itself. Reflect in similar ways about your past and future. Find things to feel grateful for or glad about in the lives of others. Help the knowing of these facts become experiences of gratitude and gladness.

E Open to gratitude and gladness. Explore what these experiences are like, and keep them going. Gently help them become as rich and intense as possible, filling your whole body. Open to related feelings such as joy, ease, or fulfillment. Embody gratitude and gladness by smiling, bouncing up and down in delight, softening your face, or reaching your arms out to the world.

A Let gratitude and gladness sink into you. As you give your mind to gratitude and gladness, let yourself feel content, that there is already plenty for you in this moment, and that you don’t need to chase after or hold on to anything more.

L Be aware of gratitude and gladness and feelings of disappointment or loss. Keep making gratitude and gladness more prominent, and if you get carried away by the negative mate- rial, drop it from awareness. Sense that gratitude and glad- ness are connecting with any disappointment or loss. Imagine that some of the many things you feel grateful for or glad about are showering down into and gradually filling any emptiness inside. Perhaps gratitude and gladness are touching young parts of you that felt unhappy. Then, when you want, let go of any negative material and stay with the sense of gratitude and glad- ness. A few times over the next hour, a dozen or more seconds at a time, be aware of only neutral or positive material—such as a sense of gratitude and gladness—while also bringing to mind a neutral trigger of disappointment or loss.

 

* Adapted from Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence



Dr. Ramani Durvasula is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and expert on the impact of toxic narcissism. She is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Los Angeles, and also a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg.

The focus of Dr. Ramani’s clinical, academic, and consultative work is the etiology and impact of narcissism and high-conflict, entitled, antagonistic personality styles on human relationships, mental health, and societal expectations. She has spoken on these issues to clinicians, educators, and researchers around the world.

She is the author of Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship With a Narcissist, and Don't You Know Who I Am? How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. Her work has been featured at SxSW, TEDx, and on a wide range of media platforms including Red Table Talk, the Today Show, Oxygen, Investigation Discovery, and Bravo, and she is a featured expert on the digital media mental health platform MedCircle. Dr. Durvasula’s research on personality disorders has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and she is a Consulting Editor of the scientific journal Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Stephen Porges is a Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina, and Professor Emeritus at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Maryland. He is a former president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research and has been president of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences, which represents approximately twenty-thousand biobehavioral scientists. He’s led a number of other organizations and received a wide variety of professional awards.

In 1994 he proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the mammalian autonomic nervous system to social behavior and emphasizes the importance of physiological states in the expression of behavioral problems and psychiatric disorders. The theory is leading to innovative treatments based on insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders, and has had a major impact on the field of psychology.

Dr. Porges has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers across a wide array of disciplines. He’s also the author of several books including The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation.

Dr. Bruce Perry is the Principal of the Neurosequential Network, Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy, and a Professor (Adjunct) in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and the School of Allied Health at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. From 1993 to 2001 he was the Thomas S. Trammell Research Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital.

He’s one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of trauma in childhood, and his work on the impact of abuse, neglect, and trauma on the developing brain has impacted clinical practice, programs, and policy across the world. His work has been instrumental in describing how traumatic events in childhood change the biology of the brain.

Dr. Perry's most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, was released earlier this year. Dr. Perry is also the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog, a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children, and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered. Additionally, he’s authored more than 300 journal articles and book chapters and has been the recipient of a variety of professional awards.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith is a child clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and issues of race. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard and then received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She performed postdoctoral work at the University of California San Francisco/San Francisco General Hospital. She has combined her love of teaching and advocacy by serving as a professor and by directing mental health programs for children experiencing trauma, homelessness, or foster care.

Dr. Briscoe-Smith is also a senior fellow of Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and is both a professor and the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Wright Institute. She provides consultation and training to nonprofits and schools on how to support trauma-informed practices and cultural accountability.

Sharon Salzberg is a world-renowned teacher and New York Times bestselling author. She is widely considered one of the most influential individuals in bringing mindfulness practices to the West, and co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts alongside Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Sharon has been a student of Dipa Ma, Anagarika Munindra, and Sayadaw U Pandita alongside other masters.

Sharon has authored 10 books, and is the host of the fantastic Metta Hour podcast. She was a contributing editor of Oprah’s O Magazine, had her work featured in Time and on NPR, and contributed to panels alongside the Dalai Lama.

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