Learning Gratitude: These 6 Exercises Really Work

It's Monday morning and it's pouring rain. I have to go to the office soon, even though I really don't feel like it today. I have a headache and haven't had enough sleep. And to make matters worse, there's no more coffee in the house ...

Does this situation sound familiar? Do you sometimes wake up in a bad mood and get upset about little things that don't seem that important in the grand scheme of things? Then it's easy to take the valuable things in your life for granted: your friendly colleagues, your job, which you normally enjoy, your two healthy children, or simply the fact that you have a roof over your head and enough to eat.

But don't worry: You're not a hopeless grump if you occasionally get caught up in these negative thoughts. Humans are evolutionarily predisposed to see the negative. Our ancestors who jumped up and ran away at the slightest rustle in the woods – even though in most cases it was just a harmless rodent – passed on their genes. For almost three million years, it was better to raise a false alarm a hundred times in a row than to overlook a predator once, because the dead can no longer produce offspring. Not a single individual in our line of ancestors was eaten before reproducing. "Better safe than sorry" was the motto that ensured our survival. [1] [1] Take in the Good Dr. Rick Hansen/Blog (2019): Do positive experiences "Stick to your ribs"?

Today, however, our survival is no longer constantly threatened. Most modern people therefore set higher goals and strive for happiness and serenity. But deep within our evolutionarily shaped brains, this realignment hasn’t yet arrived. The survival program still takes over and makes us react to every little thing. The good news: By consciously learning gratitude, we are permanently changing our brain structures and thus helping our thinking muscle to regularly focus our attention on the beautiful side of life. Here are six exercises to outsmart your evolutionary grumpiness:

1. Gratitude for the Ungrateful

Do you like challenges? Then we have a gratitude exercise of a special kind for you: mental subtraction. First, think of a few things you are particularly grateful for. In the next step, imagine what it would be like if you didn't have exactly those things in your life. What if ... you had never moved to the city where you now live ... you hadn't taken your cat from the animal shelter back then ... or if you had never read that one book that has strengthened you so incredibly in your personal development?

The empty space they leave behind is exactly where you find your gratitude. According to a study, this "subtraction game" increases well-being ssignificantly more than conventional gratitude! [2] [2] Study: US National Library of Medicine (2008): It's a wonderful life: Mentally substracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts Because, as Marcus Aurelius already knew:

Look at the best of the things you have and then consider how eagerly you would have searched for them if you didn't have them.

2.  Beans in Your Pocket

An exercise for on the go: Before you leave the house, put a handful of beans (or buttons, marbles, coins) in your right pocket. Every time you see or experience something beautiful, move a bean from the right pocket to the left pocket. In the evening, you can count the beans and remember the beautiful things that happened to you during the day. Alternatively, you can use a bracelet that moves from the right to the left wrist whenever you are grateful for something, and vice versa. The downside is that you can’t check at the end of the day how many moments there were. Instead, you make moments of gratitude more conscious through an additional hand movement while you experience them.

3.  The Gratitude Letter

Dear people who have enabled you to do so much in life. Friends you can call at three in the morning if you aren’t feeling well. Teachers who have encouraged you to realise your talents professionally. There are surely many people you are grateful to.

But how often do you actually tell them? We often mistakenly assume that our loved ones know how grateful we are to them. We underestimate how meaningful and effective it can be to simply say thank you, for example with a letter. Those who are particularly brave can read it out loud in person or on the phone, just like in this touching video.

4. Ultimate Holiday Feeling – Just Without a Holiday

Imagine travelling to a foreign place. How you look at the new surroundings in wonder and curiosity: the people, the landscape, the cities and villages. Maybe locals smile when they see you constantly taking out your camera and taking photos of things that are completely natural to them.

Apply this curiosity and fascination to your own hometown for once. On your next walk, you can – instead of going through the shopping list in your head as usual – play a thought game. What would you notice if you walked through the familiar streets for the first time? What are things that are natural to you, but don’t exist in other parts of the world at all? Can you see things that normally bother you in a positive light? Many people complain about cold and rain, for example, but what would it be like to live in a country where it’s always hot? Would you miss the seasons there?

5. Learning Gratitude at the Fridge

How about a gratitude collage to literally bring the valuable things in your life before your eyes? Perhaps with beautiful holiday pictures, photos of friends and family, or symbols of your own strengths and abilities. Just by crafting it, you create a lot of positive thoughts and your brain practices gratitude. The collage works best in a place where you see it several times a day, e.g. above your bed or on the refrigerator door.

To remind yourself daily that you want to practice gratitude, you can also use other visual memory aids: For example stickers that you distribute in your home. Or a personal mantra that you stick on top of your laptop. Through such affirmations, i.e. positive statements that you repeat regularly, you can replace ingrained negative thought patterns with new ones, thus practically "reprogramming" your brain. [3] [3] Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: Philine S. Harris, Peter R. Harris, Eleanor Miles/Study (2016): Self-affirmation improves performances on tasks related to executive functioning

6.  The Gratitude Journal

"What are you grateful for today?" is a simple but powerful question. With a gratitude journal, you can easily integrate this question into your daily routine as a simple but effective ritual. I personally have been using The 6-Minute-Diary for almost two years and really go through my everyday life much more consciously and gratefully. As many studies show, a few minutes a day are enough to write down your thoughts and permanently change your brain.

As with all six exercises: Your choice of words is less important than the feeling of gratitude that you train. Think, before you start writing, of something beautiful and consciously feel how that feels. Make sure to take some time for it. While negative experiences can go directly into long-term memory, positive experiences should be held in consciousness for a few extra seconds to stay in memory. [4] [4] Emmons Lab: Dr. Robert Emmons/Blog (2008): Gratitude and Well-Being

Here are a few ideas for entries in your gratitude journal: Who are the people who enrich your life and support you daily? What valuable experiences have you had that have changed your life for the better? What are the little joys in your everyday life?

Finally, one more little challenge

Even in difficult life situations, we can still learn gratitude. If you aren’t succeeding in seeing something positive in a current crisis, you can remember past problems that you have already overcome. What did you learn from them? How did you grow from them? And where would you be today if you had never gone through this difficult situation?

People who have gone through a difficult time often say that they live more consciously and are grateful for the little things in life. Or, as Albert Einstein already knew:

There are two ways to live your life: either as if nothing were a miracle, or as if everything were one. I believe in the latter.

____________________

This post is by Maria Röckmann. While studying journalism in Down Under, she one day held a microphone in front of a man's face, fell in love with him, and stayed there. When she isn't roaming around the playgrounds in Brisbane with her children, she writes for the 6-Minuten-Verlag or works on her first novel.

Sources:

[1] Take in the Good Dr. Rick Hansen/Blog (2019): Do positive experiences "Stick to your ribs"?

[2] Study: US National Library of Medicine (2008): It's a wonderful life: Mentally substracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts

[3] Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: Philine S. Harris, Peter R. Harris, Eleanor Miles/Study (2016): Self-affirmation improves performances on tasks related to executive functioning

[4] Emmons Lab: Dr. Robert Emmons/Blog (2008): Gratitude and Well-Being