Perhaps the most underrated holiday is Thanksgiving. Sandwiched between Christmas, pretty much everyone’s favorite holiday, and Halloween, perhaps the best holiday for dressing up and having some great coordinated pictures, Thanksgiving can often feel like a footnote in the ever-expanding Christmas season. And yet, at its core, Thanksgiving encourages us to focus for a moment on one of the most important emotions: gratitude.
There’s lots of research about the benefits of gratitude. Grateful people sleep better, have better self-esteem, experience less physical pain, and have better psychological health. Gratitude seems to be a key antidote to anxiety, depression, and most negative emotions. People who practice gratitude are more likely to be content with their life circumstances, which is a hugely important factor in mental well-being, as we cannot control what life throws at us.
In my work as a professional counselor, I often talk about gratitude with my clients. Every single one of them acknowledges that it’s an important thing that they want to be better at, but it seems like it’s a consistent struggle to practice gratitude.
So, as we go through this week of Thanksgiving, what are specific ways that we can incorporate gratitude into our everyday lives?
Well, the first would be to start noticing the little things that you are grateful for. When we think about gratitude, we often start with the big things. We are grateful for our spouse (hopefully!), kids, home, health, and all that good stuff. But, it doesn’t seem that reminding ourselves of these big things that we are supposed to be grateful for is the best way to improve our gratitude. We all get caught up in the day-to-day rhythms of life and can grow almost callused to how appreciative we are for those big things. And, let’s be honest: sometimes we aren’t actually grateful for those things. Sometimes our spouse deeply hurts us, our kids are annoying, or our house brings more stress to our lives due to the incessant need to keep it up.
While it is good to acknowledge the big things when practicing gratitude, people who cultivate a life of gratitude find it in the small things. For example, in my attempts to practice this in my own life, I’ve been intentional to be grateful for the warmth of my new winter coat as well as the softness of the fleecy inside. After a long day of work last week, I practiced gratitude when I saw a butterfly flying around the plants on the sidewalk as I walked to my car from my office. And I’ve been practicing gratitude while taking those first gulps of nearly freezing air when stepping outside in the morning for the first time, as it reminds me of the countless cold mornings I experienced growing up in northern Michigan.
Just as important as noticing these small moments is taking a small amount of time to just sit with them and appreciate the experience. We can get so caught up hurrying from one thing to the next, that we miss out on appreciating these small moments. Cultivating gratitude means that we take a pause from whatever it is we are doing or thinking about to just appreciate the small moment that we had.
The more you practice gratitude, the more you will find little things to be grateful for. As you go about your day today, start noticing the little things that you are thankful for and see how that changes the way you feel!
Mischa McCray is a licensed professional counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist in Greenwood. He can be reached at mmccray@wpcgreenwood.org.
