A Complete Guide to Authentically Practicing Gratitude

Have you said thanks today yet (and really meant it)?
For many people, practicing gratitude has become almost as routine as taking your daily vitamins.

A thank you a day keeps the doctor away, right? 

There’s a TON of research out there to prove the tremendous impact of acknowledging your blessings on boosting happiness. Many people have adopted practices such as gratitude journaling, expressing gratitude towards others, and focusing on the positive aspects of life to cultivate a sense of gratitude.
But has it all just gone too far? Have we become victims of the expectation to give thanks? 

While gratitude practice certainly has its benefits, relentlessly searching for the good in everything can, itself, become a nagging source of stress.

When you place too much emphasis on gratitude, you may feel guilty or ashamed if you don't always feel grateful. You may also feel like we're not doing enough to cultivate gratitude, creating a sense of inadequacy. Additionally, if we're constantly focused on being grateful, you may overlook negative emotions or situations that must be addressed. 

While gratitude is a powerful tool for improving our well-being, it's essential to remember that it's not a cure-all solution. You must find a balance between cultivating gratitude and acknowledging and addressing the challenges and difficulties in our lives.

There's a lot to say about this topic. Can practicing gratitude offer a path to genuine happiness? Yes… And it can also become a heavy burden if it’s used as a shortcut or even weaponized to produce guilt.

Read on to discover how you can redefine our approach to gratitude, ensuring it becomes a source of genuine joy and self-care rather than an overwhelming expectation.

The Importance Of Practicing Gratitude

Adopting an appreciative outlook on life can make all the difference to your happiness. Expressing gratitude benefits your physical, mental, and social health on a deep level. Specifically, writing down the parts of your life that bring you joy is a powerful, highly beneficial practice to your total well-being. This can take the form of writing affirmations or keeping a gratitude journal. 

One compelling study tested whether keeping a gratitude journal over a 3-week period would increase overall well-being.¹ The results showed that it raised participants’ happiness and life satisfaction while decreasing depressive symptoms. It also showed that regularly practicing gratitude increases a person’s altruistic outlook. 

A 2017 study found that practicing gratitude through journaling can help disconnect practitioners from toxic emotions and rumination.² The positive effects of gratitude writing shown by this research were compounding and became more obvious over weeks or months. Additionally, the study proved that gratitude journaling trains the brain to be more in tune with experiencing gratitude.
More generally speaking, a Berkley study has found more generally that practicing gratitude is proven to: ³

• Strengthen the immune system

• Lower blood pressure

• Increase motivation to exercise

• Improve sleep quality

• Induce joy and pleasure

• Reduce feelings of isolation

Now that you know the benefits of a gratitude journal, let's look at some tips for getting the most from it.

Tips for Keeping A Gratitude Journal

• Integrate It Into Your Daily Routine: Make it a daily habit to get the most out of your gratitude journal. Set aside a dedicated time for writing, whether in the morning or before bed. Keep the journal nearby as a reminder to make it a natural part of your routine.

• Let Your Thoughts Flow Freely: Ensure that writing in your gratitude journal remains enjoyable. Don’t burn yourself out with rigid standards for what makes your list, a specific format for listing, or perfect handwriting. Experiment with listing your entries, allowing thoughts to flow effortlessly without overthinking. This approach not only maintains the pleasure of journaling but also streamlines the process for daily reflection.

• Record Challenges Alongside Successes: Don’t hesitate to record challenging moments in your gratitude journal alongside the highlights. Use them as opportunities for emotional release and gain valuable perspective on personal growth during healing reflection.

• Let Go of Expectations: While a gratitude journal typically focuses on the more apparent blessings in life, delve deeper to find appreciation in seemingly ordinary or less obvious aspects. During difficult times, this practice becomes especially powerful, reminding us that beauty exists even amid adversity.

• Widen Your Scope Beyond Material Items: Finally, ensure that your expressions of gratitude extend beyond material possessions. Studies suggest that tying gratitude solely to materialism may actually have the opposite effect of lowering overall well-being. ⁴ Instead, what makes us truly happy is focusing on non-materialistic aspects such as experiences, relationships, and simple joys. 

When Practicing Gratitude Really Just Doesn’t Help

As described above, the benefits of practicing gratitude are MANY, from strengthening the immune system to inducing joy and pleasure. 

So why shouldn’t you live in a perpetual state of thanks-giving? 

It’s good for you! 

And it’s good for the people around you!!

I mean seriously, what’s WRONG with you for not being grateful?!!

And that mindset ⬆️ is exactly the problem.

It's a well-known fact that cultivating gratefulness enhances personal well-being and has a positive impact on those around us. 

But maintaining an aggressively positive outlook at all times also limits the space you allow yourself to express genuine frustration, explore difficult emotions, acknowledge physical exhaustion, and address conflicts that naturally arise as you go through life.

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From this perspective, the pressure to express gratitude - regardless of one's true feelings or circumstances - can become overwhelming and burdensome.

So how do you strike the balance between cultivating gratitude (because yes, it really does work wonders!) and truly acknowledging all of the not-so-grateful feelings you have from time to time? 

Here are a few tips to help you on your way.

6 Tips for Recognizing and Cultivating Authentic Gratitude

Whether you keep a gratitude journal, sing your praises, or pray to the high heavens, here are our tips for cultivating authentic appreciation:

1. Recognize Toxic Positivity In Disguise

Feeling pressured to put a positive spin on things? Don’t rush yourself. If you avoid uncomfortable emotions and force gratitude, you practice toxic positivity - not authentic gratitude. Toxic positivity is the dogmatic belief in always holding a positive, upbeat attitude, regardless of the difficulty a situation presents.

Toxic positivity can manifest as avoidance of difficult emotions or conflict, inauthentic expressions of gratitude, or a self-righteous attitude used to shame or silence others who are struggling with difficult emotions. This mindset can inadvertently lead to denying or suppressing complex emotions, potentially causing more harm than healing. To get the most from your gratitude practice, it’s crucial to acknowledge and validate difficult emotions.

2. Create Space In Conversations for Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty

When conversing with others who are struggling, it can be tempting to jump to solutions. Don’t - and don’t suggest making a gratitude list as a solution if someone confides in you. This may sound obvious, but the truth is that most of us aren’t very good at holding space in conversations for others to express complex emotions like loss, grief, and uncertainty. Our tip? Try listening instead.

3. Tune In to the Nuances of Gratitude

Gratitude is essentially an emotion. Like all emotions, though, gratitude isn’t static or one-dimensional. The relief you feel when your partner cooks dinner differs from your deep appreciation for an understanding colleague. Both are shades of gratitude - but they are different. Exploring the nuances of gratitude can help you find the right words for what you feel when reflecting on these experiences. Some variations on gratitude include:

• Gratefulness

• Thankfulness

• Appreciation

• Recognition

• Acknowledgement

• Regard

4. Give Up On “Guiltitude” (Guilt-Based Gratitude) and Get Comfortable Calling It Out

What do you get when gratitude is motivated by guilt? Let’s call it “guiltitude”. “Guiltitude” is what happens when you skip the uncomfortable feelings and fast-forward to “...but I’m so grateful, really!” This is often easier to identify in conversation with others than when working through your own emotions. When gratitude is expressed to qualify a difficult situation, it’s a good sign that the person expressing gratitude feels guilty for burdening you with their struggle or for focusing on the difficulty when other parts of their life may be going well. Let’s gently remind each other that it’s okay not to be ok 💕 

To get the most from gratitude practice, find time to reflect on what you appreciate when the guilt isn’t driving you to make false or exaggerated claims about what’s good in life.

5. Recognize the Limits of Giving Thanks

“You can't gratitude-list your way out of cancer,” says Lavi. Gratitude can improve your health, but it can’t heal serious wounds. Because, no, cultivating a regular gratitude practice does not cure serious medical conditions, resolve systemic injustice, or achieve world peace on its own. When we perpetuate a culture that values relentless grace and positivity above exploring real issues, we reinforce social dynamics that keep anyone with a disadvantage in life in their place. The societal pressure to be grateful at all times despite inequality underscores the need for a more nuanced approach to practicing gratitude that intersects with social change.

6. When Your Life Is Falling Apart, Don’t Force It

What about when your life is a complete mess, and you’re desperately searching for a way to just get through the day? Well, we’ve been there too 🙌🏽 The truth is, this is when you need the benefits of gratitude practice the most. But it’s also the moment when expressing appreciation for anything triggers resistance, desperation, and possibly anger. Any practice, whether meditation, gratitude journaling, or exercise, only works if you do it. Instead of faking gratitude, try documenting what’s going on instead. Simply take 20 minutes and make a bulleted list of your day's events.

You may not find one thing that gets your heart to blossom with thanks - and that’s ok. 

You may be surprised by the small things in your day that gave you a boost. You may find solace in recording your experience. Or, you may just need that moment actually to feel what’s going on in your life.

And that’s enough.

• Sources

  1. Karns, Christina M., W. E. C. Moore, and Ulrich Mayr. “The Cultivation of Pure Altruism via Gratitude: A Functional MRI Study of Change with Gratitude Practice.” Frontiers in 1.Human Neuroscience 11 (December 12, 2017). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00599.

  2. Kini, Prathik, Joel Wong, Sydney McInnis, Nicole T. Gabana, and Joshua W. Brown. “The Effects of Gratitude Expression on Neural Activity.” NeuroImage 128 (March 1, 2016): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.12.040.

  3. California, R. E. U. of. (2010, November 16). Why gratitude is good. Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good/ 

  4. Marsh, J., & Keltner, D. K. U. B. D. (2018, January 8). How gratitude beats materialism. Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/materialism_gratitude_happiness