Ten Tips To Help You Express Gratitude In Your Life

Gratitude is defined as a grateful appreciation of what an individual receives, whether it is tangible or intangible. In other words, it means an advantage you gain thanks to someone’s generosity. In fact, you usually do not feel grateful if you have to pay someone to have done you a favor. In this article, we give you ten tips to help you express gratitude in your life.

The experience of gratitude is strongly conditioned by the assessments you make. These are the result of two processes (Emmons and McCullough, 2003):

• You realize that you have achieved a positive, pleasant and beneficial result.
• You realize that an external contribution has made this result possible.

The object of gratitude is usually outside of you. For example, you can feel gratitude to other people, nature, God, the animals, the cosmos, etc. In fact, you gratefully and happily receive all the little and beautiful that life offers you.

Benefits of gratitude

Feeling grateful is doubly rewarding. This is because you not only benefit from the object of your gratitude, but also from the feeling of emotion. Let us examine some of the benefits of gratitude:

• It makes you prosocial. Gratitude increases your efforts to help someone, even though such efforts are costly.
• It enhances your romantic relationship. Gratitude in interactions creates a strengthening of the bonds in your relationship. Therefore, both the recipient and the benefactor feel satisfied.
• It improves sleep quality. Gratitude predicts a higher quality and duration of sleep.
• It benefits your relationship. Being the goal of gratitude means that your relationship will grow with the person expressing gratitude to you.
• It affects your mental health positively. Research has found that higher gratitude is associated with a lower risk of depression and anxiety.

• It contributes to the satisfaction and happiness of your life.

Keys to increasing gratitude

The benefits we mentioned earlier are good reasons to be more grateful. With this in mind, we give you some tips and activities that can help you express gratitude in your life.

Letter of gratitude

Seligman proposed this idea in 2003. It means writing a letter to a person you feel grateful for, but for whom you have never been able to express your gratitude. Then give them the letter.

In 2005, Seligman et al. a study and found that a week after the letter of thanks was written and delivered, people felt happier and less depressed. These positive changes lasted for about a month.

The interesting thing about this exercise is that you reflect and focus on what you value that others have done for you. This reflection makes you aware of the details that have positively affected your life. Furthermore, it helps you to understand that not everything is as bad as it seems, and that you have had some people in your life who have given you beautiful memories.

Appreciate the good things in your life

Focus your attention on the aspects of life you can be grateful for and write them down. Then reflect on how they make you feel and why you should be grateful for them.

Based on this exercise, you can start a diary in which you write down everything you are grateful for. This helps to raise your awareness of the things you should express gratitude for.

A surprise around every corner

Seville (nd) designed an activity that you can do with your partner or with someone you live with daily. Find a time during the day to reflect on something you like about the person you want to show your gratitude to. Write down your thoughts, tell them how much you appreciate what they have done for you and how grateful you are.

Put a date on your notebook and hide it somewhere among their belongings so they can find it anytime. For example, in one of the socks, the wallet or the purse. At best, the person will feel happy for your gesture. On the other hand, if they do not find it, you will still benefit from it, since you have shared your feelings of gratitude.

Top ten things to be most grateful for

Robert Emmons (2007) suggests ten ideas to ensure that you do not forget what you should be grateful for.

1. Write a gratitude diary

This will allow you to cultivate gratitude by daily reminding yourself of gifts, blessings and good things that have happened to you and that you have enjoyed in your life. Emmons says of gratitude: “

2. Remember the hurt

Not everything is good in life. Bad and unfortunate things happen that can make you think the worst. However, you overcome these negative moments. In fact, they serve to remind you how difficult things were before and how far you have come.

3. Ask yourself three questions

• What have I received from _____?
• What things have I given to_______?

• Have I caused problems and difficulties? If so, what are they?

The first question focuses your attention on what you have received from life, nature and other people. The second question focuses on what you have given, and helps you understand how connected you are to others. The third allows you to distinguish the damage you have caused and think about how not to repeat it.

4. Learn the prayers of gratitude

Express a few words of gratitude for what is happening to you. It does not have to be a religious prayer, it can be of any kind. The idea is that it expresses your gratitude.

5. Restore your senses

Concentrate on your perceptions, become aware of the world around you. Enjoy the scent of a perfume, the sight of a sunset, the melody of a song, the caresses of your loved ones.

Your senses remind you that you live in a stimulating world. As Emmons puts it: ” Through our senses, the ability to touch, see, smell, taste and hear – we gain an understanding of what it means to be human, and of what an incredible miracle it is to be alive .”

6. Use visual reminders

Write short thank you cards on post-it notes and stick them where you can see them all the time. This will help you to always remember that there are reasons to be grateful and things to be grateful for.

7. Make a promise to practice gratitude

Deciding to behave in a certain way increases the likelihood that you will actually do so. It is important that you write it down and put it in a place where you can see it. You may also want to share it with someone.

Some promises can be: “I promise not to take so many things in my life for granted,” “I promise to stop and appreciate the good things in my life at least once a day,” or “I promise to express gratitude to someone who has influenced me in my life. ”

8. Pay attention to your language

Words affect what you think and help you build the interpretations you make about your life. Therefore, it is important that you use expressions of gratitude that allow you to appreciate the world as a place to be grateful for.

9. Perform acts of gratitude

These actions refer to writing letters, keeping a gratitude diary, or saying thank you. The purpose of this is to help you shape your feelings of gratitude.

10. Think outside the box

Leave your comfort zone occasionally and look for new situations where you can feel grateful. For example, you can take a walk to admire different facets of nature, try different foods or explore other ways to have fun. The idea is that you venture out and face different and new circumstances.

It is important to emphasize that in order to increase your gratitude, you need to be aware of what you are grateful for. Your daily life tends to be engrossed in routine, work and many routine tasks. For this reason, you often do not stop to think about your place in the world and what is happening to you here and now.

Awakening this awareness is the first step to becoming grateful. This is because if you are not conscious, how do you know what you are grateful for? Being aware and remembering what life has given you gives you the most important ingredients for expressing gratitude in your life.