What is the difference between someone who is full of joy, has a zest for life, and always seems to have a smile on their face, and someone who is negative, unmotivated and difficult to be around?
Is it the amount of money they have?
Is it simply their personalities?
Is it the circumstances they’re going through?
Nope.
While all those things certainly can play a role in the amount of joy a person experiences, they’re not the primary factor.
The primary factor is gratitude.
Gratitude has the power to change any situation. Specifically, gratitude has the power to change the way we experience any situation. Psychologists and other therapists who use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (or CBT) as a therapeutic modality will aim to guide their clients to understand that it is not the situation that determines our attitude or emotions, it is how we approach or perceive the situation that will ultimately determine how we feel about it.
Being grateful may not change your circumstances, but it does change you, and that makes all the difference. This is the power of thankfulness. It has the power to change the very way we experience life. It can neutralize negative emotions and enable us to learn incredibly valuable lessons even in the midst of challenging circumstances. Thankfulness has the potential to transform your health, both mental and physical. It can also transform your spirituality and help you attract good things into your life.
With thankfulness comes great power. And the more you cultivate gratitude, the more power you will experience in your life.
First and foremost, gratitude is a way of living. It is a state of being in which you open yourself up to receive good things. It is a posture of openness, receptiveness, and willingness to receive abundance. And when you do receive those good things, you instinctively and consistently give thanks. In other words, gratitude can be described as an emotion which is similar to appreciation. Someone can experience gratitude for someone or something at a certain moment in time, and someone can experience gratitude for a more long-term period of time, which is seen as a positive character trait.
Gratitude is not a one-time event where you simply say, “Thank you.” It’s an entire way of being in which you joyfully receive good things and give thanks for those good things.
So, gratitude is a habit. It is a perpetual way of life, almost like breathing. You take in something good and breathe out gratitude.
It is a beautiful cycle and a powerful way to live.
Gratitude comes from the recognition that you have received something good. In other words, you did not create this thing yourself. Rather, it came from outside of you. From God. From a friend. Maybe even a complete stranger. Because you received something from outside of yourself, it means that you did not make it. It’s not like you built something through your blood, sweat, and tears.
Rather, someone gave something valuable to you. When we work hard to create something, we can say that we earned it. Gratitude, on the other hand, comes when we receive something that we have not earned. In order to be grateful, you must regularly recognize when you have been given good things. You must cultivate the ability to look around and see when good has been done to you or given to you.
Notice how gratitude connects you to something larger than yourself. This is one of the great powers of gratitude. It takes us outside of ourselves and connects us to other people, nature, and even a higher power.
In other words, it is recognizing that not only have we received something freely, but that thing we received is also good. As a result, we are grateful. It is important to regularly be grateful for and affirm the goodness that flows into our lives.
Looking at some of the opposites of gratefulness can help us better understand exactly what it is.
The opposite of gratefulness is:
The good news is that you cannot simultaneously be grateful and be in any of the states just mentioned. You could say that gratefulness is exclusive. It expands and does not make room for anything else. When you are grateful, you simply do not have space to complain or be angry or frustrated. You only have room for gratefulness.
Would you rather be filled with gratefulness or with envy, anger, or discontentment?
If so, then you must seek out a life of gratitude.
Dr. Natasha Williams is a Radical Self-Care Expert, Registered Psychologist and one of the founding clinical directors of Allied Psychological Services in Toronto, Canada. Dr. Williams is also an international professional speaker, trainer, best-selling published author and a certified Diversity, Equity and Inclusion facilitator. Dr. Williams is currently a media expert with CTV News, CTV Your Morning and the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). For additional information please visit www.drnatashawilliams.com.