Gratitude (14/09/20)

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You may be feeling a bit flat this week with the announcement of the new COVID lockdown restrictions. I must admit I was feeling a bit uninspired to write this today, but my Social Policy colleague Eileen Cunningham inspired me this morning with starting up her daily gratitude posts on Facebook. This is something that she did during lockdown earlier in the year; she shared daily thoughts of gratitude about aspects of her life, often simple things like a walk or a meal or a positive experience in work. This really helped her to feel positive during a testing time. The power of gratitude is well documented and research evidence suggests that it has a positive impact on mental health.  

 

So what is gratitude? It can be lots of things – an emotion, an attitude, a moral virtue, a habit, a personality trait or a coping response. From a psychological perspective, gratitude involves having a distinctive view of the world; it’s about focusing on and appreciating what we have rather than what we lack. Research has shown that grateful individuals are less likely to feel deprived in life and more likely to appreciate others’ contributions to their wellbeing and appreciate simple pleasures. Research has also found that gratitude is correlated with personality traits associated with positive emotional functioning, lower dysfunction and positive relationships, so some may be more prone to gratitude than others! However, even if you are not predisposed to an 'attitude of gratitude', you can actively integrate a gratitude practice into your daily life - see this article for 40 creative ways to do this. I personally like the simple practice of starting and ending the day with thinking of or writing down three things I am grateful for. If you like meditation, there lots of specific gratitude meditations available on youtube, some example are here and here.  

 

Do you practice gratitude, or is this something that you think could benefit you? Drop me an email if so, I would love to hear from you: j.e.probyn@salford.ac.uk 


Please see this article for references to the research referred to in this post. 

Comments

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