40 days ago – The Big Gratitude Research
I thank people invariably, at times, I over-thank people. I had often heard, how Gratitude was instrumental in changing people’s lives. Contrary to what I had read and heard about Gratitude, this habit did not change my life at all. I started wondering why, and hence began my research on the Expression of Gratitude.
I started by asking friends and colleagues about their views on Gratitude. It is basic human psyche, when we hear words that contribute to good aspects of our personality like ‘kind-hearted’, ‘grateful’, ‘successful’, ‘caring’ etc. it is easy to agree that we possess those qualities. I got a lot of affirmative replies to my question of “whether you practice Gratitude on a daily basis”, but the results were skewed. It gave me an idea about how it made others feel when someone thanked them but still didn’t give me an idea of how it transformed lives. Why was it such a powerful emotion wasn’t quite clear! I started to google and read various articles and blogs on the Expression of Gratitude. Not limiting my information only to the spiritual material, I read up on a lot of articles written by research scholars who were studying Gratitude at length since years and had conducted experiments in this area with normal people as participants. One of the starting aspects in all the material that I read, was, “acknowledging” this emotion. The most common way demonstrated was by jotting down in a notebook at least 5 things that happened to you on a particular day that you thought you were grateful for. This exercise is known as maintaining a Gratitude Journal or Gratitude Journaling. Many while describing their experiences on how their life changed by practicing Gratitude, swore by Gratitude Journaling. They found it to be the most powerful process in transforming the way they would live and love.
If so many people were suggesting Gratitude Journaling, it was time for me to experiment with it to find out if it worked. One of the best parts about over-stocking your cabinet with stationary (stationary freaks would understand!) is that during moments like these, your mind doesn’t give you any excuse to not start right away because you don’t have a good journal, or a red coloured pen you’d like to write with! Mind tricks, tell me about it!! But I was glad that wasn’t the case, I had a spare, blue coloured pocket-sized notebook and I decided this book will be my “Gratitude Journal”, for hopefully a month. I was all set!
25 days ago – The Gratitude Journal
The challenge was to write down at least 5 things that happened to me on a particular day that I was thankful for. These could be anything from being thankful that I reached work on time to being thankful that I got a great project to work on. The whole point was to acknowledge this emotion in real-time. I’ll be honest, at first, I couldn’t think of many things that I was grateful for until and unless they were related to acts I wasn’t involved in. Let me give you an example, when I would encounter situations that got resolved by someone else’s support, I would be thankful to them and could .only think of such moments to include in the journal. But these moments did not occur daily. Still I kept at it. Some days I wrote the most random thing, like, “Thank you for this beautiful day”, but I didn’t skip journaling. I am also on a weight-loss and fitness spree so I had at least one thing to be thankful for. There were still 4 more things that I had to come up with. When I couldn’t find anything to thank for, I would generally thank that I have food to eat, this life, friends, good parents who give me wings, great wi-fi speed, Netflix, time to write and think – you get the drift…
15 days ago – Situation-ally Grateful
At first, writing generic good things in my life felt quite unnatural. Why do I have to be thankful for things like the Sunrise or the Sunset? Or good parents and a house to live in? What suddenly struck me after continuing this for some days was, when I counted my blessings in real-time, it made me aware of how blessed I was. When I was a week down in the experiment, I realized that Gratitude was a very event oriented practice. We are often times only situation-ally grateful. Being thankful to somebody when you experienced support from them and being a Grateful person were not the same. I mean, they were the same but they were distanced from one another.
One of my close friends, grinning ear to ear said to me, “I thank my wife every time she bakes me a cake, my favourite dessert”. A colleague pointed out that he would never forget to thank the lift-man every time he got off the lift. A few days into this experiment I realized what I and my friends were doing – we were being thankful for the acts of kindness towards us by others! But we weren’t as such aware of the fact that having privileges was also something to be grateful for, as this was already hardwired in our system as obvious luxury of life. Gratitude is not just about being a grateful person when someone is kind to you. Gratitude is more a way of life than an event, really.
What makes Gratitude such a powerful emotion is the awareness and the connection it creates within you that makes you come alive. The Awareness, that each moment, we have the freedom to make choices and shape our lives the way we wish to. The Connection it creates with the resources we already have in our lives that we forget we had (in my case, the fast wi-fi). It is this habit of taking things for granted that I saw breaking with more days into journaling.
There were days when I did not journal. There were a couple of days I wanted to see what happens if I don’t journal. What happened? Nothing. The energy that was required to initiate the flow had already caught momentum, two days of not journaling wasn’t going to slow it down. That is not how the universe works, that is how we work! After not having written for two days I wanted to go ahead and journal on the third day and was desperately waiting to pen down the series of magical moments that continued in my life each day.
7 days ago – Practicing Gratitude
After almost 33 days of my experiment with Gratitude a massive transformation that unraveled was that I started to take a closer look at all that was happening with me. Of course, writing does that to you, since it is historically proven to be therapeutic and cathartic. Not only was I writing, I was jotting down my blessings each day. At least 5 things initially, doubled and quadrupled with each passing week. There were more things I started to be aware of that were good in my life. I still take things for granted, but it has reduced quite a bit. Now there are more blessings to pen down. Because my outlook towards Gratitude is changing, automatically and magically my outlook towards everyday life is changing. I am actively observing, as if, taking a street level look at life each day and this is helping me break down my life into a list of things that are – working in my life and not working in my life.
One thing that stood out and I take away from this whole experiment personally is realizing that Gratitude is not an event based practice, it is a way of life. Practicing Gratitude is just like a successful weight-loss program. I compare it with weight-loss here because I have tried to lose weight many times, lost it but has always come back till I understood and practiced this golden rule of weight loss that is, “weight-loss is not an event oriented goal, it is more of a lifestyle modification mission”. This is the exact same with Gratefulness, I realize. It is not an act to be practiced to reciprocate someone’s act of kindness, it is an everyday emotion – a way of life. You do not lose weight because your best friend is getting married in 6 months in order to feel and look good, you lose weight despite that because you are ready to modify your lifestyle.
Present Day…
Some of the other things that I see a difference in while practicing gratitude each day and the areas of life that have been affected are –
Connection
Connection to the resources and gifts that are accessible to me are increasing. The lack that I felt at times, those moments when you feel whatever you have is just not enough to get through has changed to how can I use what I have better to create more of what I want. And because I am connecting more, I am starting to experience vastness and openness more. This is organically changing my daily interactions with people. I am more cheerful and happier because I now have “I really have things to be thankful for” days. My daily human connection at work, at home, with myself is all getting stronger because when I practice Gratitude towards others, I show them that it is them who made a difference. This not just makes the other feel good and worthy of having done a good deed, it also helps me build relationships based on mutual trust.
Inner Child
At first when I started to write about the obvious things around me like the Sunset, the Sunrise, this life, I realized how I had killed – joy, wonder, awe, believing in magic, the immense happiness a balloon or a rainbow in the sky brought to me. More I am appreciating the natural things around me, more I can bring back a sense of wonderment in my life. I am actively and consciously connecting with my inner child once again.
Sense of Control
One of the biggest relief I experienced after about 20 days into journaling was due to this realization that not everything is in my hands. Gratitude does that to you. A feeling of so much happening in your life, it may be happening as a direct or indirect result of various external factors, even if you wished, you won’t be able to control them. I experience more freedom because it is only as much that I can control anyway. I am learning to TRY to give my best by letting things just flow. It is new to me but I will get there with more days into journaling.
Slowing Down
Since it has opened me to a whole new way of looking at my own life, more of a magnified look, it has slowed me down. With career and with everything that I want my life to get better at. I had a sense of urgency. I wanted things to kind of just move. No one likes to wait, right? The reason Expression of Gratitude is such a powerful process is, it slows you down to review where you are headed to and how aligned and closer you are to what you want. Street level look at my goals and breaking down my life into various approaches that are working versus the approaches that need to be considered, enables me to review what I have done so far and how long I have come. Honestly, we end up giving much lesser credits to ourselves than we often should.
Grounding
The moment you realize that not everything happens because of you, it takes you away from that sense of entitlement you feel. Gratitude is similar to being humble. The funny side to humility is, the moment you think you have it, you’ve lost it. Gratitude is just the same. The more I practice it, more I realize there are so many people and factors each day that are responsible with what I experience that I can only be increasingly thankful. It grounds you in a way and helps you appreciate and value co-creation and collaboration.
….
The more days I will journal my way through, more I will uncover of this powerful emotion. This has been one of the most fascinating and mind-set changing experiments and I am sure it will only get better. I am happy that I am actively transforming myself from a situational over-thanker to a regular Grateful person. The latter does feel satisfactory!
So, next time, when you get off the lift, don’t just thank the lift-man, also write in your Gratitude Journal about how grateful you are for a perfectly functioning elevator because imagine climbing a flight of stairs when you work on the 23rd floor!! *rolls eyes and faints*
FADE TO BLACK
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