Cultivating Gratitude

 November is here and holidays are quickly approaching. It’s easy to get pulled into the stress and chaos of planning, coordinating, and spending around holiday seasons. Cultivating gratitude is a fantastic way to shift your perspective and recharge your capacity through the shift. Gratitude means appreciating the good things in life, no matter how big or small. Making the practice of gratitude part of your day can build happiness, boost self-esteem, and positively influence other health benefits. 

 Here are Harmony’s top 5 tips to help families incorporate more gratitude into their lives:

A Plate full of Grateful!: Participating in gratitude conversations in tandem with daily habits like mealtimes is a great way to cultivate it into a regular practice. By using a habit stacking structure (i.e. pairing it with a daily task), you are more likely to continue with it until it becomes a natural part of your routine.

Incorporate a Dialectical Lens: Toxic positivity occurs when there is no room for acknowledging the challenges we face and there is an imbalance in the focus of only positives. That’s not how life works and can sometimes leave us feeling unseen and unheard. However, when we consider multiple truths existing in the same place (i.e. I had a crappy day AND I love my job) we are using a dialectical lens. This creates space to acknowledge challenges AND leaves room to emphasize and appreciate the good things, which can help make gratitude feel more accessible and authentic.

Gameify it! : By utilizing alternative ways to express and identify points of gratitude, it becomes more novel and engaging, increasing the buy in from kids and teens. Kids respond to weird! Instead of saying “What are you grateful for?” you could try asking:

1. 1. “What’s the weirdest good thing that happened to you today?”
   2. “If you could thank an inanimate object, what would it be?”
   3. “What’s something that annoyed you at first, but you’re kind of glad it happened?”

The weirder the questions, the more honest the answers get, and the more opportunity for genuine connection.

Ease into it with Mindfulness: Gratitude can be hard to access when our body and brain is in go mode. When possible, taking a few minutes to participate in a mindfulness activity sets the stage for your system to be more in tune with gratitude. Practicing mindfulness is also incredibly helpful in strengthening emotion regulation so it’s a wonderful thing to model and engage in. When in doubt, slow things down!

Modeling in Motion: As parents and caregivers, demonstrating gratitude for everyday moments can be powerful. When you see your kid doing something on their chores list a simple “I’m so grateful for your help” can go a long way. Thanking your spouse for their support, your pet for their companionship, your sibling for their advice; noticing the small every day occurrences has large ripples of positivity that set the tone for the home.

On Thanksgiving Day, Keep in Mind:

-Your job isn’t to force everyone into performative thankfulness. It is to slow down and be present in the moments with your loved ones. Take the good where it is, there is no expectation of what that needs to look like.

-Chaos is almost always a piece of coordinating events like this. Give yourself (and others) grace when if/things don’t work out as planned.

-Zoom out! When things feel out of control, take a moment to reflect on what IS in your control: your responses. Take a break if needed, pass a task to a loved one, or have another piece of pie. How you feel is more important than how things ‘look’.

Activities to try for Cultivating Gratitude:

Gratitude Jar (and alternatives) – Our brains light up at over visible engagement. Choose a method that is suitable for your family, whether it is jotting moments down in a notebook, post-it notes on the fridge, doodling on windows with washable markers, gratitude jars, whatever works! Each night in November, encourage your family members to write down at least one thing they appreciated that day, no matter how small. Seeing these messages accumulate can uplift the whole home.

Journaling – Writing things down emphasizes things into our systems. There are countless gratitude prompts, guided journals, or themes available on the web. Journaling free style in any notebook can be just as helpful!

Seek the Silver Linings – When things don’t go our way, it is easy to get stuck in the mud. By intentionally focusing on finding the silver linings in challenges, we can help our brains practice finding the patterns of good, even in the tough times.     

Happy Thanksgiving! Megan