Banner Photo Credit: Amadeo Valar
“Deprived thinking turns good things into less or nothing. Grateful thinking turns things into more. ”
As Melody Beattie recovered from chemical addiction and started to rebuild her life, she dreamed of marriage, family, and homeownership. She married and they had a baby girl. After looking at many dream homes beyond their finances, they purchased a house they could afford.
It had broken windows, broken wood, walls with holes to the outside, bright orange carpets with huge stains, and a dirt yard with no grass. They had no money to fix it up or furnish it, and no home repair skills. Their attempts to renovate the house always failed.
At night when her husband and daughter were asleep, Melody would go to a private room and grieve over how much she hated the house, and how hopeless the situation was. This went on for months. One night, as she was crying, the thought arose, "Why don't I try gratitude?" At first, she dismissed it as absurd and impossible. But realizing that what she had been doing wasn't helping, she decided to give it a try.
In her own words:
I still wasn't certain what to be grateful for, so I decided to be grateful for everything. I didn't feel grateful. I willed it. I forced it. I faked it. I pretended. I made myself think grateful thoughts. When I thought about the layers of peeling wallpaper, I thanked God. I thanked God for each thing I hated about that house. I thanked Him for giving it to me. I thanked Him I was there. I even thanked Him I hated it. Each time I had a negative thought about the house, I countered it with a grateful one.
She stopped her nightly ritual of wallowing in misery and practiced gratitude for three months.
Over time, her attitude changed. She accepted the house as it was and started taking care of it as if it were her dream home. She gained confidence in making repairs, creatively thought up new ways to affordably fix and furnish the house, learned of resources available to her she hadn't known about before, and recruited others to help. Within a year, she had a beautiful, furnished home that she was genuinely grateful for.
“I will take a long look at where I am today and be grateful for my place. It’s right for me now, and is preparing me for the adventure ahead.”
The Power of Gratitude
Melody's story shows how gratitude builds our capacity to address challenges and difficulties mindfully and compassionately. When problems arise, people who practice gratitude are more easily able to address them in a loving, courageous, and skillful manner.
Gratitude is also a powerful way to connect to our inner joy. Gratitude involves simply being genuinely thankful for something. You can thank others, Life, God, Source, or the Higher Power of Your Understanding. Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgiving, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
Gratitude practice encourages us to pay more attention to everything that we are grateful for throughout our day. The brain's negativity bias predisposes it to focus on all that is negative -- a surefire way to have an unpleasant, reactive, and unskillful day. By consciously choosing to focus on all that is beautiful, pleasant, and good, we not only counter the negativity bias of the brain but also feel better.
The peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Psychology, published a study in 2019 by researchers in Brazil who conducted a randomized clinical trial on over 1,300 people to study the effects of a 14-day gratitude practice. They found that “The gratitude intervention managed to increase positive affect, subjective happiness and life satisfaction, and reduce negative affect and depression symptoms.”
“The more thankful I became, the more my bounty increased. That’s because - for sure - what you focus on expands. When you focus on the goodness in life, you create more of it. ”
The Benefits of Gratitude Partners
Gratitude becomes a practice when we take simple actions that help remind us of our intention to be grateful on a daily basis. One way to do this is to keep a gratitude journal. Near the end of each day, you would write down three or more things from your day for which you are sincerely grateful.
Another way to practice gratitude is having gratitude partners. Gratitude partners message their gratitudes to each other once a day. This allows our gratitude practice to become a social and community-building activity where we can learn from, support, and connect with each other.
Some of the benefits we may find with gratitude partners include:
• Accountability. We are more inspired to do the practice because of our commitment to our partners and the joy of doing it together.
• Seeing New Reasons for Gratitudes. Our gratitude partners may be thankful for things or situations that we would never have thought to be thankful for. This may inspire us to reevaluate these things and start seeing what is beautiful, beneficial, and wonderful in them as well.
• Deepening Our Relationships. To vocalize what you appreciate often requires vulnerability and trust, which helps us strengthen our relationships with one another.
• Cultivating Appreciative Joy. In addition to the joy we get from our gratitude, we may practice being joyful at the successes and good fortune of our partners.
“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
Starting Your Gratitude Practice
• Use a slogan to remind you to set a daily intention to live with gratitude. Hang a slogan such as "Live with an attitude of gratitude" or "See the good in all life and all situations" somewhere where you will see it every morning.
• Live with an attitude of gratitude. Every day, be on the lookout for all that is good, wholesome, and beautiful in every human, nonhuman animal, life form, and situation.
• Look for the positive in those things that your brain likes to complain about. Ask yourself, "What spiritual qualities does this situation invite me to cultivate?", "What does this situation teach me about living with love and gratitude?", "How does this situation serve me or other life forms?”
“‘Be grateful to everyone’ means that all situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best. ”
The Gratitude Partner Practice
• Anytime after 5 pm or before bedtime, send a group text to your gratitude partners sharing three or more things that you were thankful for that day. An example might be:
I am thankful for the ability to do my best, the ability to be flexible when things are not as expected, people who have the courage to vocalize their appreciation, the courage and strength that allows me to be vulnerable, and being able to give my pain and difficulty to Source.
If you forget to send your text at night, please send it early the next morning, or at your next opportunity.
• As you write the text, try to feel the pleasant sensations of gratitude in your chest, head, or other parts of your body and SAVOR THAT FEELING. It may take time to be able to generate and know this feeling of gratitude, so whenever it arises, savor its pleasantness for at least 20 seconds. This will help your brain recognize the importance of heart-felt gratitude, making gratitude arise more easily in the future.
• Read the gratitudes that your gratitude partners text you and practice sympathetic joy. Practice being happy for their happiness. After reading their texts, think to yourself, "May your joy/success/love/happiness/whatever-is-appropriate continue, increase, and never end!" or "I am happy that you're happy." Try to generate and feel happiness in your chest as you do this. This is especially important to do if you feel jealousy or envy, as sympathetic joy is the antidote to those unhelpful ways of thinking.
• It is not required to respond to your partners’ texts. You may respond to each of their texts with supportive and encouraging messages or emojis, but responses are not required. We want this activity to be as simple and effortless as possible so that even very busy people can participate.
• Practice equanimity relating to your partner’s participation. If a gratitude partner does not text for a day or two, energetically send them loving-kindness. If it helps, think "May you be peaceful and happy," "May you resolve all conflicts with love and ease," or similar blessings. Try to generate and feel love in your chest and radiate it out to them. People get busy and forget. No big deal. Be content to just keep texting your daily gratitudes, and allow them to walk their own path. Do not harass, pester, or shame your partners into sending their gratitudes daily. Trust that they are reading yours and that they will start up again when they are able. Of course, if you haven't heard from them in five days or so, feel free to send them an "Everything all right?" message to check in.
• Be genuine, heartfelt, and honest in what you send. If you are genuinely appreciative of the same things day after day, that’s fine. It’s not about being unique or not repeating yourself. However, if you are more concerned about what your partners think of you, and this causes you to send them messages that are not sincere and honest, then it may be best to do a journal gratitude practice to help you get in touch with your genuine sincerity before doing this in partnership.
• Do this practice for 3 to 6 months before evaluating it. It takes time to create a new habit and rewire our brains. Be patient to see the results. In the meantime, do the practice as best you can.
“Today we have gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other, all living beings, and all life forms. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to each other as People.
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Finding Your Gratitude Partners
• Share this article. Send the link to your potential gratitude partners so they can read it and understand what is being asked of them and how to make the most of it.
• Connect with the Boundless Love Project. To deepen your connection to our Boundless Love Project community, we encourage you to have one gratitude partner who regularly attends our School of Love on Tuesday nights. If you do not, or are unable to attend, please contact us and we will connect you with a gratitude partner from our community.
• Connect with the wider community. To spread our love, and benefit the wider community, we encourage you to also have one partner who is not regularly attending the School of Love. Pick a friend who might be open to this and ask them to be one of your gratitude partners. Send them the link to this article, so it can explain what is being asked of them and why.
“Gratitude has been linked to better mental health, self-awareness, better relationships, and a sense of fulfillment.”
Bonus: Share the Gratitude
• As your appreciation for others grows, try telling them how they benefit and enrich your life. Many people feel unappreciated or under-appreciated. Sharing your genuine and sincere gratitude of them can help brighten their day and strengthen your relationship.
• Experiment with sharing your appreciation of others using Nonviolent Communication, another skillful practice we encourage. The basic structure to share gratitude using NVC is: "When you... (describe what they did) did the dishes without me asking you to it met my need for (list needs met) cooperation, mutuality, and respect and I feel... (the feelings you feel) happy and grateful." Follow this link for a deeper dive on NVC and Gratitude. For a helpful handout in using NVC in all situations, check out this NVC Learning Guide.
Start enjoying the power and promise of gratitude in your life. It helped Melody Beattie transform her attitude, her home, and her life for the better. Start a gratitude partner practice today and discover how it benefits you.
In Beattie’s book, Beyond Codependency, she encourages us to practice gratitude and shares with us the power it has had in her life, writing, "I have had the opportunity to practice the gratitude principle many times in my recovery. It hasn't failed me. Either I change, my circumstances change, or both change."
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If you have questions or comments about this practice, or if you want to share with us your favorite quotes on gratitude please leave them below. :) Wishing you boundless gratitude, joy, and success!