How ‘Selfish’ Gratitude Improves my Daily Experience

With a lovely Thanksgiving just passed, I’ve decided it’s a good time to finally post a piece about gratitude that I’ve sat on for more than a year.

The Turkey Holiday’s tradition revolves around vocalizing the things we’re grateful for — ‘giving thanks’. When I hear gratitude mentioned, it is usually in this vein of paying respect to the things we are grateful for. I feel like it begins to sound like the value of gratitude is in speaking it aloud, handing it out as thanks. It is often talked about as a ‘should’ — something we ‘should’ do more often. There’s a notion that people should incorporate more gratitude into their lives, be appreciative and thankful for what they have, and let others know how grateful they are for these things. But, as a matter of personal experience, I can give thanks to others relatively easily without feeling a powerful sense of gratitude inside. It’s easy for me to politely thank my friends and family without feeling particularly awed at my fortune and lot in life as the words leave my lips.

This is a shallower definition of gratitude than the wellspring of well-being that I think gratitude really is.

While I think letting those near to us know how important and valued they are (I could certainly do a better job of that year-round), I think the central value of gratitude lies not in expressing it outwardly, but in the internal feeling of it. Personally, I hadn’t appreciated the difference between thinking grateful thoughts, and connecting with the feeling of gratitude prior to a year ago. Connecting with the internal feeling provides me a direct link to the present, and can make life truly feel like a gift. In this way, gratitude can be a sort of selfish joy that does not need to be expressed to be valuable.

This inward smile of appreciation that I’m referring to seems to appear at fairly unpredictable times — some days it’s the feeling of warm sun on my face, sometimes it’s a great bite of food, and on other days a good breath of fresh air. It’s the feeling that it’s jolly good to be alive, a reaction of wonder in response to experience. As I type this, I’m noticing the feeling of the soft blanket around my legs, and the weight of my roommate’s warm dog against my thigh. When I’m lost in my thoughts, I don’t even feel these sensations. The way that gratitude has changed my daily life is in making that feeling of innate appreciation for existing more accessible. The mental machinery and conditions that need to be met in order to feel this appreciation are less mysterious now. Recognizing that this sense of appreciation for existence can be felt directly and more often has enabled it to become a real source of wellbeing.

Science to Backup this New-Age Sounding Psycho-Babble

Research demonstrating the tangible benefits of gratitude practices are plentiful and conclusive.¹ The simplest method studies use is the practice of gratitude journaling — writing down 5 things that you are thankful for each morning. However, after practicing gratitude journaling for two years, I’ve found another method that helps me connect with the feeling of gratitude more directly. When I’m in a moment of transition from one thing to the next in my day, (usually the same moments that I would choose to pull out my phone) I take a second to focus on the feeling of my feet on the ground and the weight of my body, listen to whatever is available to hear in that moment, see the sight of colors and textures around me, and take stock of my mood. The results of scanning my senses in this way range from banal to positively sublime, but it never results in me feeling worse than before I began.

I’ve found that feeling wonder at existing isn’t as much a matter of thinking thankful thoughts, as it is a matter of relaxing my mind and observing experience directly. Things I wouldn’t usually think to be thankful for — like textures against my skin, or the leaves moving outside — magnify to become little sources of wonder.

If this sounds like meditation, that’s because it really is. The umbrella of meditation is much larger than the mainstream blurbs about it would suggest, and the scientific literature indicates the same physiological benefits. Gratitude has many of the same effects as formal meditation — it increases gray matter in the brain², improves life satisfaction and well-being, and decreases the grip our brain’s governing structures have on filtering our experiences into ‘fortunate’ and ‘unfortunate’.³

As an example, say you’re looking for airline tickets for an upcoming vacation. You’ve found a flight you like, planning to book in the next morning once you double check with your partner or friend. In the morning you awake to the horror of the airline raising the price $300 since the previous night. At this moment, it is understandable for a myriad of thoughts to rear their ugly heads. I’ve experienced this example a few times, and I’ve noticed that when I’m more consistent in my practice, and more connected to the inner feeling of appreciation, the less common and intense these thoughts become. That filter of the brain that sorts new information into ‘good and fortunate’ or ‘bad and unfortunate’ begins to relax its grip on my experience.

In Conclusion

The wealth of scientific research on this topic is encouraging. Finding out that practicing gratitude causes permanent changes in brain physiology is absolutely wild — but I couldn’t specify exactly what differences gray matter makes to my mood or experience. What I am sure of, is my experience that life feels a little brighter, more immediately here, and less stressful the more I take time to appreciate the world around me.

A Note

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I’ve found a hundred silly ways to talk myself out of putting anything in writing out into the world, despite knowing that the only way to get started… is to get started. Please leave any connections, criticisms, or questions you have to this piece in the comments — knowing what you think of my writing is what drives me to put it out there.

Sources:

¹ Sansone, Randy A, and Lori A Sansone. “Gratitude and well being: the benefits of appreciation.” Psychiatry (Edgmont (Pa. : Township)) vol. 7,11 (2010): 18–22. ² Fox, Glenn R et al. “Neural correlates of gratitude.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 6 1491. 30 Sep. 2015, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01491. ³ Alex M. Wood, Jeffrey J. Froh, Adam W.A. Geraghty, Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration, Clinical Psychology Review, Volume 30, Issue 7, 2010, Pages 890–905, ISSN 0272–7358.